Putin on the blitz

4 comments

August 11, 1:35 PM

by Tony Long, North Beach Examiner

 

 

Granted, City Lights is a very good bookstore -- actually, it's a great one -- but a neighborhood with all this intellectual firepower walking around should be able to support at least one, maybe two, more fine literary establishments. Shouldn't it? I'm speaking here of good general interest bookstores, or maybe a couple of shops specializing in used volumes, complete with musty shelves and a cranky old guy behind the counter who knows the subject matter of every book ever written.

We have a few small, specialty bookstores scattered about -- for a treat, check out William Stout Architectural Books at 804 Montgomery St. sometime -- but except for City Lights the general literary landscape is barren these days.

Booksellers who have put their faith in our North Beach literary heritage have paid the price for their folly. Black Oak, the terrific Berkeley store, tried and failed to establish a beachhead on Broadway. And we had Carroll's, a wonderful used book store on Vallejo Street -- for about 20 minutes -- whose owner finally gave up and decamped for Paris (where, apparently, the written word still means something).

It's not enough to blame it on the internet, either. For one thing, only an idiot would read an entire book online. And not all of us are finding our books at Amazon.com.

Otherwise, how do you explain bookstores that are thriving in other parts of town? Take a stroll down Valencia Street sometime. You've got three bookstores within a few blocks of each other down around 16th Street. The Richmond District, with its largely Asian population, is nevertheless blessed with Green Apple Books, which runs neck and neck with City Lights for best Buchhandlung in town. (Green Apple also has an annex a block away from its main Clement Street store.) Even the heart of baby-stroller yuppiedom, Noe Valley's 24th Street, has two good bookstores within hailing distance of each other.

I can offer no explanation for this glaring cultural deficiency. Maybe you can. Whether we're reading or not, North Beachers have never been shy about expressing an opinion. I'd like to hear yours now.

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