Customers like Duncan may explain why Borders bookstores across the country will be liquidated, beginning as soon as Friday. The store’s parent company, Borders Group Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February. At the time, the chain had 23 stores in Massachusetts. Now only 14 remain open, and the rest could be gone by the fall.
About 20 people, many dressed in business attire, flipped through magazines on the first floor of the Downtown Crossing store yesterday. Eric Peterson, 24, of the North End, leaned against a wall and read Golf Digest while on his lunch break.
“I’m very disappointed,’’ he said. “This location is where I come almost every day to read a magazine or book.’’
The banking analyst, who frequents the store three days a week but buys only about one book a month, said he prefers to walk the aisles of a store to find the books he wants to read. When the store closes, he plans to start using the online retailer Amazon.com instead.
On the second floor of the 40,000-square-foot bookstore, more than a dozen people sunk into black couches and armchairs with books and magazines on their laps. Mirroring library etiquette, the few who spoke did so in hushed voices.
James Patterson, 34, of Roxbury, who is currently unemployed, sat reading a “Fall of the Hulks’’ comic book. The last time he bought a book from Borders was at least a month ago, he said, although he spends two hours a day there researching careers and companies. (The comic book was a little pleasure reading to break up the day, he said.)
Patterson said the up-to-date selection of reading materials at Borders beats the choices at the public library, where he goes to use the Internet in 15-minute spurts to search job listings. “Here, you have no time limit,’’ he said.
When Borders closes, Patterson plans to use the library a bit more often, but he isn’t ready to accept the fall of the chain. “I am hoping that it sticks around,’’ he said.
