----- Original Message ----- From: "Graywolf"
Subject: Re: Film is dead... (NOT)
Actually, Bob, I beg to differ. Photography became big business. The money grubbers, like Ritz, bought the camera stores from the camera enthusiasts. The got rid of the interesting high-end stuff that did not sell fast, and replaced them with a minilab. They laid off the decently paid enthusiasts behind the counter and replaced them with minimum-wage off-the-street part-timer clerks. Now it is no longer a big bucks business, so the money grubbers are moving to something else. Only there are very few enthusiast stores left. Mail order took over a lot of that slack in the 80's and 90's, so there may never be new enthusiast shops.
We did not abandon the local shops, they abandoned us.
The local shops got killed by the first run of mass merchandisers, you had your Ritz Cameras in the states, we had an entity called Astral Photo.
William Robb
