Another independent loses to the chains

All but one or two independent pharmacies are left in Duluth,  all the others have closed in the face of Walgreens, Target, Wal-Mart, and other big box stores.

Happily, local breweries are flourishing.

Sadly, there is only one independent new-books bookstore left, all the others are used books only.

Happily, independent restaurants seem to be popping up and flourishing.

Sadly, independent coffee shops are losing to the chains.  The latest is Bixby’s in the Mount Royal Shopping Center.  It had been around before we moved to Duluth in 1999.  This fall, the latest owners were featured in a neighborhood newspaper.  The owners were optimistic even with a Caribou and a Starbucks within five minutes walk away.

Today, when I went to Bixby’s, there was a sign on the counter that it would close on January 1.  Although the staff was being cheerful to the customers, I think I heard a bit of sobbing from at least one of them.  Consider that the staff were mostly college students who had to work to keep up with their bills.  Losing a job in the middle of the school year is a bit hard to take.

I could go to a coffee shop/restaurant on our block, but that doesn’t give me much of a walk.  I could go to an independent pizza shop/restaurant in the same building as Bixby’s for coffee, but it just doesn’t seem like a coffee shop.  I don’t think it would be a place where we would stop for coffee for the trip to Brimson.

I guess I can’t complain too much because I didn’t go to Bixby’s as much as I used to.  Two of my coffee buddies died and the other moved out of town.  Plus, as I’ve gotten older I’ve walked the mile to Bixby’s less frequently, often wimping out because of rain or snow.  I didn’t drive there much either because the whole point was the exercise and the comradary.

Big-ga boxes, big-ga boxes, all made of ticky-tacky, all-a look the same!

Computers: How the times change!

Twenty-eight years ago last month, I left Univac to form my own software company based on the new microcomputers.  Partly I felt Univac was stuck in old paradigms of big boxes, and partly I wasn't doing very well myself on creating new ideas.

A few years after that, Burroughs bought Univac and called the new company Unisys.  Unisys continued making mainframes for a few years and slowly moved to being more of a consulting company.

Before that really happened, I moved to using Macs only and haven't stopped since.

Now, Unisys is now considered a "technology services specialist", and some Motley Fools think that Apple and Unisys may reach some agreement to help Apple seek enterprise and government contracts.

Also, once companies started adopting personal computers, the "gold standard" became PCs and Microsoft.  The Mac was a toy and not a business computer.  Now "Apple's Tim Cook [acting CEO] says the iPad is being deployed or piloted in 80% of the largest corporations today, and 88 of the Fortune 100 companies are testing or using the iPhone."

See "3 Stocks Ready to Roar", Motley Fool

And older readers may remember all the predictions of Apple's demise in the 80s and 90s.  I read somewhere that Apple now has more market value than Microsoft.

And as I've said many times before, we ain't seen nothing yet in technology.