““The cultural critic Leon Wieseltier angrily noted, “The streets of American cities are haunted by the ghosts of bookstores and record stores, which have been destroyed by the greatest thugs in the history of the culture industry.” The bitter irony is that Amazon noticed that a few independent bookstores in big cities were still thriving, so it decided to go into the bookstore business itself.””
![“[Columbia House] magazines were how I found out about the punk world going on in New York. Because of what I read, at the age of 15, I hounded the local record store to order a copy of Horses [1975] for me by Patti Smith.” quote by Michael Stipe](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/b4f/michael-stipe-6714_age_columbia-house-magazines-were-how-i-foun_159607.jpg)
