What's in a break? Borders

Well, not anymore.

As we have all seen in the news the Borders book chain went in to receivership earlier this year and after months of trying to work it’s way back in to the black, it announced the closure of many stores; one of them is my local, in the Brisbane CBD.

Finding out was a very black day in my life.

In my four years of working in the city, Borders has been a place of happiness and refuge on my break. It is a place my mouth watered while looking through Nigella’s cookbooks before I bought them, it is a place where my partner bought me a Vanity Fair to both inspire my journalistic spirit and hint for a date, a place where I spent hours buying the myriad of books I own but have not yet read and most importantly, it is a place where I was able to revel in my magazine addiction.

I have a strong, passionate love for magazines.

There is such a beauty in walking into the store picking up the latest copy of a glossy, feeling the smooth silken paper and getting that strong scent of paper and printer ink. It is intoxicating. It is the sense of intoxication that I get that causes me to never be able to escape Borders without dropping $100 on magazines.

It became an expensive habit, very quickly.

Week after week I would go back in and discover wonderful new titles that I had never seen or read and knew I had to have them. My core seven magazines spiralled out of control to a core 10 or 12. Borders was becoming my greatest financial crisis (GFC), which is ironic considering how this tale ends.

The store is closing and security at JB will start to make comments about the increase in my visits to their store, I will have to search Brisbane again for a retailer that stocks Spanish Vanity Fair (if anyone knows of anywhere, please let me know) and I will have to find somewhere new to take my friend Amy-May when she is next in town.

Rest in peace Borders Brisbane City, I will miss you.