By the time you read this, the downtown Borders bookstore may already be closed for good. If it isn’t, it will be within days. That’s sad. Sad for book readers and book buyers, but sad for downtown, too.

When Borders opened its downtown store 10 years ago at the corner of Sixth and G, it seemed like an anomaly amid the restaurant, nightclub and boutique-shop boom. But many people – myself included – discovered that it was pretty cool to have a major bookstore downtown. It gave you somewhere to go on your lunch hour, for one thing – to browse, to sip coffee or enjoy a snack, possibly even to buy a book. It also provided a quiet refuge after dark downtown. With all the commotion of the nearby Gaslamp Quarter and emerging East Village, here was a giant store, surprisingly serene for its size, where you could pop in and chill out.

It’s not like Borders had much choice in this closing. The troubled company is seeking bankruptcy reorganization, and the downtown store is one of 200 nationwide that is being shuttered. The plight of chain bookstores, and the reasons behind it, are well-documented: more and more readers are buying their books, music and DVDs online, and the arrival of technology like the Kindle and Nook are changing the way we read.

You’ll always find pessimists who bemoan that “nobody reads anymore” and that the closing of the downtown Borders is one more sign of the inevitable cultural apocalypse. I don’t know what the statistics about American book readership are or who compiles them, but I believe people still read. They’re just reading – and shopping for books – differently than they used to. Just as readers have turned away from newspapers in favor of new media. Readers are still out there.

The departure of downtown’s Borders store is more about the loss of a gathering place. We need as many of those, whether they’re parks or businesses, as we can get given all our urban sprawl.

I’ve felt a personal connection to that downtown Borders, because it helped me weather a bad breakup 10 years ago, not long after the store had opened. I was living downtown, and though I was surrounded by other people and the noise they can make, I remember feeling as alone as alone can be. I didn’t look for comfort or camaraderie in the Gaslamp haunts, or in the nearest Starbucks. But somehow Borders, with its peculiar hush, was the right place to be at the right time. Even if I spoke to no one but the person behind the cash register, I didn’t feel alone; and surrounded by books, regardless of price or genre or vintage, I felt soothed and very much alive.

A store the size of Borders is not like your neighborhood bookstore in its peace and familiarity, but for downtown residents like me, that big place on the corner of Sixth and G was my neighborhood bookstore.

Downtown isn’t my neighborhood anymore, and I can’t remember the last time I was inside that Borders store. The last time WAS my last, and I’m sorry to see it go.