LITERACY ON THE RUN

As you can guess I have a life-long fondness for bookstores.
Not surprisingly, I can name several.

First four, in order:

Boekhandel Priem

Blackwells

De Slegte

Atheneum Boekhandel


These four are significant, because without them I would scarcely be literate. They are the first bookstores that I ever knew.

Priem was the local bookstore in Valkenswaard where I spent several hours in the stacks nearly every day for many years, reading whatever I could lay my hands upon.
Blackwells was the establishment in England from whence came regular packages with everything new that my parents wished to read, or thought that my brother and I should have a chance to discover.
De Slegte is a used-book store that has branches in many Dutch towns, including Eindhoven - four floors of fascinating tomes, multiple languages, dust, and students.
Atheneum is the grand seigneur that dominates the Spui Plein in Amsterdam. After the weekly bookmarket on Fridays, you would enter the Atheneum to purchase new what could not be bought second hand, then retire to the Café Luxembourg to peruse your purchases and smoke a cigar.

When I lived in Berkeley, I could be found almost every day at Moe's, Cody's, or Shakespeare's. Retire to the Café Mediterraneum to hold forth, spew, and pontificate.

Once I moved to SF, it was City Lights, Columbus Books, the Zhong Mei Shu Dian, or Ng's and Louie Brothers. Plus every second-hand bookstore between here and hell, provided it was accessible by bus or train.
After which, head over to Ping Yuen Coffee Shop or the Eastern Bakery to gloat.


ANNO 2011

This past weekend I thought to acquire a second copy of a particular book, so that I could keep it at my office. It's a descriptive grammar of a foreign language.
So I went downtown, to Union Square.

Borders Bookstore.

I forgot one crucial detail.

Borders imploded. They're reorganizing. Going bye bye. Damn. Bankrupt. Place is a madhouse at present, thirty to fifty percent off everything. Much of everything is already gone.
Including the foreign language section. It used to be nearly five thousand volumes (10 x 8 x 50 plus) about many languages, now it's down to 20 books maximum. If even that.
Twenty books of the world's least popular languages.
I do NOT want to learn Abkhazian or Zyngo!

This means that the San Francisco shopping district has become as illiterate as a suburban shopping mall near trailer parks in the interior of the country.
There are now NO bookstores in the Union Square area.
There used to be over fifty bookstores in this quadrant of the city.
Including the remaining Chinese bookstores, now there are a dozen shops left.
Two of which sell mostly pulp fiction from the bestseller lists and self-help.


San Francisco isn't in the top ten most literate cities in America anymore.
We kinda suck.



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