The Circle of Life?

Ladies and germs of the general bored public: Those of us at BGSU know that said university is home to one of the only Popular Culture departments. This place has pop culture oozing out of its weeping pustules.

Eww.

Anyway, you'd think that this town would therefore have an overabundance of cool shops catering to collegiate pop culture. Well, the city of Bowling Green does have two fine indie music shops. And... we've got coffee shops. After that, it's rather disappointing.

Used book store? No, that finally went belly-up a couple years back. There are used books in a coffeehouse, which is cool... except that it's owned by one of those "local rich asshole" types.

Comic book store? No, that disappeared in the last year, after years of flirting with zoning issues and profitablitly. Now there's only a random selection at Waldenbooks in the sMall.

Art movie house? That we got. Although it, too, was bought out by the aforementioned local rich asshole, and its collegiate staff canned. My girlfriend is still bitter.

Gaming store? Not anymore. I stopped by the ol' R&B News, looking to pick of the new White Dwarf and browse the 40K selection. I was a little surprised when the door was propped open, and a chair lay on its side, blocking the entrance. More surprising, though, were the barren walls and the notice that the paintball portion of the store was moving to another city. What about the games? The man-in-charge said, he knows not.

Damn, that's depressing. The only thing keeping me from wailing and gnashing my teeth is a new deli I found, Stimmel's Market. They have big ol' bottles of Corsendonk brown ale. Oooh. The gods, they giveth, yet they taketh a lot more away.