My son loves hanging out at Barnes and Noble. They used to have a train set up and they have plenty of books that you can read without buying. Of course all that just leads to kids saying "can I have this...can I have that." So it does sell stuff. That said, I have noticed over the months that people leave the place a mess and stuff disappears. So although it inspires kids to demand parents buy stuff, it also is a source of pilfered and damaged stuff. In general I felt sorry for them for the damaged and stolen merchandise.

Today the children's area was empty. That's unusual. Often it's quite crowded. Today it was empty. The train set is gone. No surprise. I hear they lost some 150 trains in the span of three months…so no surprise they discontinued that particular sales technique.

I also noticed that there was a cop there. Fully uniformed, on duty cop. That is definitely NOT usual. But, well this has become such a police saturated society that I barely thought anything of it. Police are now watching us EVERYWHERE it seems, either in person or on camera.