Amazon’s new brick and mortar bookstore is wildly banal. The only thing it disrupts is foot traffic heading toward a Restoration Hardware. So why does it exist?’

Amazon Books—yes, Amazon named their bookstore Amazon Books—is across the street from a Tommy Bahama, at the entrance to an upscale outdoor shopping mall named University Village. (The mall resembles neither a university nor a village, though it does have very nice landscaping, a place that sells athletic woolens, and a Starbucks at either end.) It opened at 9:30 yesterday morning. When I arrived at eleven there were a dozen people being held outside by a man with a walkie talkie “to prevent overcrowding.” Some in line had heard about the opening on local TV spots. Many took photos in line and again once they were in the store. “Who’s inside?” a woman with three visible bangles asked me. I told her that I did not think any authors were inside, but that the store was opening today. I did not use the phrase Day One, but wondered whether the staff, including presumably Walkie Talkie, had taken a moment before opening that morning to reflect on Amazon’s jargon, including that bit of eschatology. He did seem to have a zeal.

Rumors that Amazon might be moving into the location first surfaced in Shelf Awareness, a bookselling trade newsletter. On Monday Amazon sent out a press release announcing the store would open the following day.

Tuesday morning at 9:30, Amazon Books will open its doors. These aren’t metaphorical doors: these real, wooden doors are the entrance to our new store in Seattle’s University Village. … Amazon Books is a store without walls – there are thousands of books available in store and millions more available at Amazon.com. Walk out of the store with a book; lighten your load and buy it online (Prime customers, of course, won’t pay for shipping); buy an eBook for your Kindle; or add a product to your Amazon Wish List, so someone else can buy it.

The store is physically odd. It betrays inexperience with retail. The stacks are situated too close to one another so that you have to brush past other browsers—Paco Underhill’s famed “butt brush”—and can’t comfortably bend down to see books on lower shelves. The first display tables are too near the doors, which discourages browsing. Above the shelves along the walls are bays of books, spine out—decoratively arranged overstock. They have no bearing on the books below them. Kindles are sold, of course, but also Amazon Fire TV sticks. Quite a bit of real estate is devoted to a line called Amazon Basics which appear to be, for the most part, bluetooth speakers modelled after the ones that Nicki Minaj interacts with in the beginning of her music videos, the kind that look like pink lozenges.

The store assumes familiarity with Amazon.com. This goes beyond understanding whether 4.5 stars is, in fact, a good if oddly precise number of stars. A shelf labelled “Most Wishlisted Cookbooks” faced the line of excited customers outside. Goodreads—a property of Amazon—is mentioned in displays. There is a desk labelled Amazon Answers. Presumably the questions asked of Amazon are answered by a human employee of the store, though it’s unclear if some sort of Delphic process involving candles and chanting occurs.