Lou Shipka donned his double-breasted suit, his wife, Zora, chose black with pearls, and the Hinsdale couple left their four children at home for a Saturday night on the town.
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“This is our 10th anniversary tonight,” said Lou, 40, slipping an arm around Zora’s waist.
She smiled and added: “We had dinner and a drink and you don’t want to go to a bar so you come here instead and relax.”
“Here” isn’t some concert hall, playhouse or private club. It’s a bookstore, the newest highbrow entertainment oasis in what has been called the vast cultural wasteland of suburbia.
In addition to two couples celebrating a 40-something birthday, the Shipkas joined dozens of others inside the Borders Book Shop in Oak Brook on that recent rainy autumn night.
Books have not always been seen as a Saturday night kind of “event.” Books were to be culled through by someone, usually alone, amid the dusty stacks of the public library, where silence is golden and coffee is prohibited.
But a new generation of super bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders among others, has changed all that. Now they are a combination of bookstore, reading room, coffeehouse and performing arts center, and they are taking the traditional appeal of a public library into new-and more commercial-directions.
After all, the public library doesn’t have an espresso bar. The only music played there is on earphones in the basement listening room, not live jazz on a Saturday night. Take a date to the library? C’mon, most aren’t even open past 5 p.m.
With their open-mike poetry readings and live music (no smoke, no cover charge), these bookstores make books themselves seem almost incidental.
Libraries let you read for hours undisturbed, but so do the bookstores, where cushy sofas and chairs entice patrons to read a while, whether they buy or not.
While they are popular in the city as well, the bookstores seem to be bridging a gap in the suburbs, which often lack arts and entertainment opportunities of the city.
The advent of these bookstores and their obvious entertainment appeal has some public library officials wondering whether those institutions ought to change, too.
“We should be in the parking lots of those bookstores on Saturday night and copy down the license plates of all the people there and ask them why they’re not at the library,” said Jack Hicks, library director in Deerfield, where two super bookstores have opened recently.
Some sociologists think it may even represent a trend toward the privatization of services once thought to be strictly in the public domain.
As yet, night clubs are not emptying on Saturday night as patrons jam the nearest bookstore. Nevertheless, the bookstore phenomenon is really taking hold in some cities where it has been on the scene longer.
Just last Friday, the New York Post asked readers to name the top 10 places for singles to meet. One of those big bookstores on Broadway topped the list.
There’s no denying that the same things that make the big bookstores attractive in the suburbs is true for city stores, which also are magnets for the erudite.
But there always has been night life and numerous arts and entertainment venues available to city dwellers. Suburban patrons say the bookstores serve as a cultural outposts in a landscape often devoid of those features.
“In Chicago, you have many things to do,” said Louis Shipka. “But here in the suburbs, there’s not that many places you could go to for a cultural event on the weekend.”
Libraries still are doing big business, however, and officials are quick to point out that they serve a much different purpose-namely to provide information free to anyone who seeks it.
For example, the Vernon Area Public Library District filled all six sessions of their pre-school storytime in just 20 minutes this fall. And last month, the Schaumburg Township District Library saw 68,649 people walk through the door of the main library just a mile or two away from the new Barnes & Noble in town.
When those 68,449 people entered, however, they were greeted with a list of library rules that included: “Do not leave children under 6 unattended . . . No eating or drinking . . . Silence is golden.”
And considering that some bestsellers are difficult to find in a public library because they’ve all been checked out, it is easy to understand why some people drift over to the bookstore to wile away an evening.
“The library still reminds me of high school and studying and being serious,” said Lilian Tcheupdjian as she sat in the Schaumburg Barnes & Noble cafe. “There’s something still psychologically tacked to it; I walk in with a small stomachache. Whereas here, it’s relaxed and laid back,” said Tcheupdjian, her coffee mug in hand.
The 37-year-old paused and then offered the ultimate compliment: “I would bring a date here.”
But while librarians are taking note of the new superstores, picking up an idea for marketing here, a tip on promotion there, most don’t believe libraries will take on a fundamentally different role.
“We’re not meeting the same needs,” said Allen Meyer, director of the Vernon Area Public Library District. One is for book-borrowers, the other for book-buyers. One has to provide a variety of not-so-popular books, the other has the luxury of stocking only the top sellers.
And furthermore, Meyer said, “I’m not sure we could justify adding on more square footage for a coffee shop; I’m not sure the taxpayers would support that.”
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Indeed, some observers believe the bookstore trend may represent a new attitude about the services traditionally offered by tax-supported libraries, which often find the public unwilling to foot the bill.
“There is an interesting tradeoff,” said Allan Schnaiberg, professor of sociology and urban affairs at Northwestern University. “Instead of paying taxes, you buy books.”
All the entertainment and free programs seem like gifts from the bookstores, and the library taxes seem like a burden to people, he explained.
For its part, the national Public Library Association welcomes the stores into communities as another way to encourage reading.
The Oak Brook Borders and the Lisle Library District worked together this year on book signings by popular authors.
Marketing execs for the superstores admit they have borrowed ideas from libraries, copying their children’s story hours and translating libraries’ take-your-time, no-pressure approach to the selling of books.
“It’s the `infotainment’ aspect of the stores,” said Dan Conetta, Borders vice president of marketing. “So if you want to spend an evening and don’t want to plan months ahead to buy a concert ticket, you can come to the bookstore.”
To many in the suburbs, the bookstores represent a needed alternative to the after-dark scene, where bars, home videos and the neighborhood cineplex have long been the only options. Most of the stores are open until 11 p.m., seven days a week.
For Jody and Howard Futterman, who came on a Friday night to Borders Books & Music in Deerfield, the choice was “an alternative to the bars,” Howard Futterman said.
The couple came because they heard the live music was good. This night it was Kirsten Gustafson singing a tribute to Sammy Cahn. It was Gustafson’s first bookstore gig.
“It’s a warm feeling, like you have some place to hang out,” said 41-year-old Howard Futterman.
Steve Napolilli said it best when he explained why he brought his wife and 10-year-old daughter to the Oak Brook Borders on a drizzling Saturday night instead of the local library.
“We could have gone to the library. But the climate and feeling here, it’s more informal and people are roaming about and they have music going,” Napolilli said. “It’s more like a social event.”