It's smells like a darkroom...
In the pre-digital age, as in from 1827 until 2004, darkrooms were a part of life to most professional photographers. Most I knew had a basic set-up somewhere. In 1995 I rented a nice office in a nice studio in Downtown Austin, and I had a ***real***nice*** darkroom. 8 foot sink, two enlarger areas, temp gauge on the water supply. Oooooooo
In 2004 I packed up my darkroom and it's in storage. Not forever, but just until I get a house with room to build a darkroom.
Very, very few places sell basic B&W chemicals and paper anymore, but Free Style in LA does, and so does Calumet, B&H still sells some as well, but NO ONE in Austin sells it. In fact, there is only one decent camera store left in this city. A city of over 1.2 million people, and only ONE camera store left.
How sad.
For my money - it's better to shoot & process real film when shooting B&W, especially for catalog or fine art.
