Not surprisingly, Hastings cited weak demand for “physical media properties” such as books, movies and games, which has been the trio of major sales categories for Hastings, as the primary reason for the company’s troubles. In other words, lots more people are downloading that type of entertainment rather than driving to a physical store to buy it.

One quick note for you Hastings customers, the company says any gift cards that are outstanding are still valid, but only for a limited time. All gifts cards or types of store credit will expire on July 13, or earlier, depending on when the card was purchased. The company also has stopped renting games.

The company has about 125 stores across the country. And, in case you are ever on “Jeopardy!” and the category is Hastings, remember this factoid: The company is owned by a group controlled by Joel Weinshanker, who also owns the rights to Elvis Presley’s Graceland operations, according to The Wall Street Journal. And there you go. Isn’t that the answer? More outfits of the King surely would boost sales.

It is too early to say whether Hastings is gone for good, but if the store does close, it marks an interesting milestone in the city. Unless I’m forgetting something, Hastings is the last chain bookstore in Lawrence. (I’m not really counting the textbook stores.) For some of us, that is significant because we sat through a very long and contentious debate years ago about Borders bookstore opening in downtown Lawrence. It was really a divisive time. A common theme of the day was how Borders was going to put out of business all the local bookstores in town. That was in the 1990s, and back then you wouldn’t have found many believers that in 2016, Borders would be closed and the local retailers once again would own the market. (Well, Amazon may own the overall market, but local retailers own the physical bookstore market in Lawrence.)

I bring this up because it is a good reminder that when it comes to predicting the future — especially as it relates to whether retailers should or shouldn’t be allowed to locate in Lawrence — nobody’s crystal ball is very good. That doesn’t mean that Lawrence shouldn’t plan and that the community ought to say ‘yes’ to everything. But it probably is worth remembering that anybody who can truly predict future American business trends almost always has something better to do than share their views on a Tuesday night at City Hall.

In other news and notes from around town:

• Speaking of stores that went bankrupt, I’m hearing that another fabric store is likely to take the place of Hancock Fabrics near 27th and Iowa streets. As we reported, Hancock filed for bankruptcy and is in the process of closing its stores. I’ll work to get some additional information on the identity of the likely fabric retailer.

• Lawrence doesn’t exactly bleed red, white and blue, according to a new ranking. The folks at the financial website WalletHub do all sorts of crazy rankings, and they have one that tries to identify the cities that most closely resemble America as a whole. It sounds a little wacky, but really it is just a study that looks at how closely a community’s demographics mirror the demographics of the entire country. In that respect, it is kind of interesting.

What this year’s study found is that Lawrence is one of the cities least like America. Or, to say it another way, Lawrence is pretty unique. Take your choice of how you want to spin that.

Lawrence ranked No. 373 out of 379 communities in the report. The lower the ranking the less like America your community was found to be. Another interesting tidbit is that right next door is a metro area that is one of the most typical of American communities: The Kansas City metro area ranked No. 13 on the list. (This reinforces the idea that Lawrence kind of is like its own country and that Johnson County residents should be required to show a passport before entering. Although, I guess a visa would suffice, especially if it has a high credit limit.)

The website looked at a lot of demographics from the Census Bureau and housing data from Zillow to compile it rankings. Certainly, I think Lawrence’s status as a university community played a large role in the ranking, as it should. Being a university community is the main thing that makes us different. I do think it is interesting to remind ourselves just how different we are in some regards. Here’s a look at the areas where we were most different from the U.S. average, according to WalletHub:

• Lawrence has a lot more renters than the average community.

• Our population is more highly educated than the average community.

• We have a lot more young people than the average city, which is to be expected as a university community. But even by university community standards, we are pretty young.

• We have a lot more people living in nonfamily homes than the average community. The Census Bureau defines a family household as one where there are at least two people related by birth, marriage or adoption.

As for how some other communities in the region ranked, here’s a look:

• No. 3: Oklahoma City

• No. 10: Tulsa, Okla.

• No. 13: Kansas City

• No. 36 Wichita

• No. 73 Waco, Texas

• No. 82 Springfield, Mo.

• No. 106 Des Moines, Iowa

• No. 116 Joplin, Mo.

• No. 121 St. Joseph, Mo.

• No. 163 Topeka

• No. 223 Lubbock, Texas

• No. 349 Boulder, Colo.

• No. 351 Columbia, Mo.

• No. 352 Iowa City, Iowa

Town Talk column