It is mind-boggling what I keep hearing about books and bookstores. They will soon be historical artifacts. E-books and e-readers will run them out of business. I know there are some signs of such a change such as Borders closing although I don’t know why that happened since Amazon and Barnes and Noble seem to be doing well selling books in all forms on-line. Then Barnes and Noble announced they are closing a bunch of stores this year. Barnes and Noble is a good fall-back bookstore when you can’t find an independent bookstore. We have two of them within 5 miles of where we live. I doubt whether both will survive.
The real bookstores, the local, independents, are the great finds. Most of them are aged, that is they’ve been around for some time. Each maintains a feel, almost a culture unique to that one store. When I move, one of the first things I do is hunt for these kinds of stores. I’ve been on the hunt in the San Francisco Bay area for several months now with some success. I’m sure I have only scratched the surface of all bookstores but I have found some gems. In the Bay Area there is a huge population of readers to serve which means lots of book stores.
One bookstore I have enjoyed is City Lights www.citylights.com. They are a landmark independent bookstore and publisher. The store specializes in world literature, the arts and progressive politics. Located in a funky old building just outside of China Town in San Francisco, City Lights provides my kind of environment. It was a great place to hang out in the 60s and still is.
Searching the southern end of the Bay I came upon another fun and historical bookstore, Kepler’s www.keplers.com. This store is in Menlo Park, right next to Palo Alto and Stanford University. It has been a literary meeting place since 1953 and in the sixties became a central point of counterculture activity. The Grateful Dead and Joan Baez performed there during that era. The store closed in August of 2005 but in response to community demonstrations to bring it back to life, it re-opened in October of that year.
Further down the Bay in the City of Mountain View there are two bookstores worthy of mention. The first is East West www.eastwest.com. This bookstore is focused on metaphysical books and products. Books range from Zen to meditation and other Far Eastern subject matter. Products include such items as crystals, Tibetan Healing Bowls and much more. It is a very relaxing and welcoming store to browse and enjoy.
Across the street is a mind-boggling bookstore. BookBuyers www.bookbuyers.com is a store with so many shelves of used books that you could get lost in there and never find your way out. I don’t know how many but seems like they must have a million books. All types, all subjects. Where do they get them? They buy them from people like me and you. It’s a store that buys from customers and pays in credits towards more books for the customers. From 20-60% of retail value is given in store credit. They also offer cash for books in high demand. Fun idea and works well for the person who goes through a lot of books and doesn’t move very often.
My bottom line is that if you care about books and their survival then I urge you to go looking and you will find interesting, independent bookstores. Sometimes you have to search but they are out there and I’m betting they will be for a long time. I will be doing my best to support them.
Stan the Man
