Let’s remember bookstores in their heyday

Part of why I moved to Portland in the 90s was Powell's City of Books, and the dozens of other bookstores. Pretty much every other store closed, and Powell's went online, and started to focus on gifts and events.

I really miss the bookstore/coffeehouse/independent businesses of my youth.

Waldenbooks

I remember businessmen lined up at the magazine rack like a urinal perusing the top shelf pornographic magazines every day during their “lunch hour”.

City Lights bookstore, Columbus Street, San Francisco. Before hippies, there were beatniks and City Lights was their home. A San Francisco legend.

The best bookstores in Pittsburgh closed shortly after I moved here. One was called Jay's, and it was on the University of Pittsburgh campus, practically. The other was the gay bookstore on the South Side. I didn't get over there as often, and I don't remember its name.

Two favorites in DC were Kramer Books & Afterwords Cafe, and Lambda Rising, both on Connecticut Avenue just north of Dupont Circle. I bought practically every book I owned at Lambda, plus the occasional issue of Jock or Men. And I went to Kramer for everything non-gay. Even when Crown Books opened right on the circle, I stayed faithful to the two independents.

Always went over to Brentano's when I worked in Century City. Sat down with my coffee in a comfy chair and could knock off a chapter before I had to get back to the office. It was the go to store for high profile celebrity signings. Met Jimmy Carter,Catherine Denuve,Liz Taylor ,Caroline Kennedy et al.The magazine section was very cruisy with entertainment layer types. On line is just not the same.

Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. I have so many beautiful books and Vroman’s Bookmarks from over the years. And Vroman’s at Christmas was so special . …. Now I’m thinking about Bullock’s Tea Room ….

[quote]Now I’m thinking about Bullock’s Tea Room ….

Are you talking Tea Room .... or tea room?

In the 1980s and 1990s Waldenbooks was my favorite local mall retailer. I always wanted to shop at a B Dalton, which for some reason, I always imagined would be more sophisticated. I never did.

Barnes & Noble long ago jettisoned most of their music section and installed a fucking toy section. It's sad and pathetic. I miss perusing film score and old Broadway musical albums, which I collect. That said, I recognize the ease with which I can usually find those things online. But it isn't the same.

Bookstores closing is a definite sign of the rise of stupidity in America.

R5 St Elmo's was on East Carson in the South Side.

They both closed somewhere in the 00s.

I don’t miss stepping over people who were camped out in the aisles at B&N. Gross, just buy the book and go home or go to a library!

Circus Of Books. The Great Porn Library of Alexandria.

[quote] Bookstores closing is a definite sign of the rise of stupidity in America.

I don't disagree on the stupidity in America....but the changes in bookstores were a wave of business changes, really.

When the various mall sized bookstores existed, they were really about best sellers - not competing with a more full service bookstore. But when B&N and Borders came along, the sheer scope of what they had, plus the deep discounts they offered on a lot of books, killed many local stores.

I worked at B&N on and off for a decade, and when I first started, they had super deep discounts on a lot of best sellers and many hardcover books. This was when they had tons of tables around. They figured the deep discounts and the comfy library feel would get you in the door, and once you were there, you'd walk out with much more than you came in to buy.

Then Amazon came along. At the point that happened, B&N and Borders changed leadership and both went from bookstores....to big box stores that happened to sell books. They may have cut corners and saved money but they also alienated a lot of old timers.

There are still some healthy local bookstores in many parts of the country. Educated and engaged people will want a place to look at books and talk to knowledgable booksellers. Like vinyl record stores, I think most local stores that are doing well carve out a niche and serve their community's wishes.

Despite working at B&N I liked Borders better. I loved their music section. But they had money issues for years. B&N's continued existence surprises me. They missed the boat on web sales and Amazon dwarfed them. But I guess they have enough of a store base and web presence to stay alive....for now.

I do miss so many of the old gay bookstores.

In addition to St Elmo's in Pittsburgh there was one in Short North in Columbus I remember. I was happy that Unabridged in Chicago still exists - until recently they had a really well stocked porn magazine and erotic book area. (Of course, everyone looks and no one buys, so I think they've reduced the number of titles).

oh, I used to love spending the day in book stores and record shops. Luckily, I live near some excellent indie bookstores so that world isn't lost to me.

I was in NYC on biz last week and walked downtown to the Strand. Was so heartening to find it filled with customers.

Love the convenience of buying online when a book is top of mind, but nothing replaces the serendipity of browsing the shelves and finding gems.

B. Dalton in the mall was always my favorite. It seemed like a special treat every time we went there. I still have a few of the books I got there.

Borders was fantastic because they also had music and movies and the ability to special order titles that were hard to find. They were great and I miss them terribly.

Bookstore managers were typically lesbians in the 90s.

Pickwick's on Hollywood Boulevard was my favorite by far.

When I first moved to NY in the 90s I worked with a girl who loved to go to B&N, because she needed a bookstore with a bathroom. She told me that whenever she went to a bookstore she immediately needed to take a shit. No joke.

I miss the "reading room" in the alley behind Circus Books at 2am.

Coliseum Books near Columbus Circle. Oh, how I miss it. I used to pick up Art Spiegelman's Raw magazine and all kinds of wonderful indie graphic novels and other delightful art books. I lived about 40 minutes' walk away. I relished every step of the walk there and the walk back with my treasures.

R21 Vaseline Alley

As a child there were no bookstores in my hick town, just the occasional bookfair that would pop up at a shopping center for a weekend. I had to make the best of mall bookstores from the bigger, not much more sophisticated town nearby. Walden Books was the first I knew. Museum bookstores, though a rarer treat, were always my favorites and I still have a great fondness for them.

Getting settled a bit after university years I started spending more time at the shops of used and antiquarian books in big cities, making a point to do the rounds in a new city if I had the time. I haunted those shops for many years, learning the squirrelly eccentricities of their dealers (and the resident shop cats), learning how to address each in his own way to be left alone to look at leisure and in quiet. I book tons of books, developed a few veins of specialized interest and built a good library.

The internet changed everything for used and antiquarian bookstores, just as it did for the antiques trade and loads of other sorts of business. Before eBay and other early online marketplaces, you could spend a lifetime looking for one book title, asking in every shop, writing to specialist dealers to be placed on a want list, etc. But with eBay, suddenly there were six copies for sale all at once, not cheap, but available, and in your hands a few days or week later if you wanted. For a few years I joined the party, picking up on my lunch walk books from a half dozen used bookstores near my office and hawking them on eBay. Not many, just things I could buy cheap and be reasonably assured of a solid return to make the effort worth it. Without much effort at all I made about $8000 profit the first year, spending my lunch hours buying books and shipping them off once I had sold them. It was pleasant and easy and a nice bit of found money. At some point the tide turned, however; the market for used books bottomed out and you could find fantastic titles for a few bucks each plus a few more for shipping. I stopped my sideline of selling and bought avidly, things that I had long wanted but I bought something else instead. Prices were so cheap that I filled all the gaps in my collection for very little money. Many of the used and antiquarian dealers closed shop, victims of eBay and a long real estate boom; most reconsolidated at home selling from online catalogues and were probably quite happy to be done with the real life customer interface part (most of the dealers were such misearble sorts as to make the worst DLers look rather jolly and sweet.)

I moved at one point, a big move, and sold off my library. I've started again but in a very slow and unambitious way, not keen any longer to have a room or two or more filled with books, but sometimes I can't not do. The other day I walked over to an annual book fair and bought some lavishly produced and printed 4-volume set of boxed art books of local interest for a crisp fiver. How could I not?

I very rarely go to a new book store these days. Sometimes something a little specialized like a Taschen Books, but I still have a look around in museum book stores.

In New York City in the 1960s-80s, I loved Brentano's and Rizzoli and an occult store called Samuel Weiser. In the 1970s, the Harvard Book Store and the Grolier Poetry Book Shop were great, although Cambridge, Mass. was full of great bookstores. In the 1980s, I lived in Denver. The Tattered Cover Bookstore was a favorite spot. At its height, the Barnes & Noble chain had stores with good stock and many amenities such as cafés and author readings.

R18 There was major lesbian drama happening at the Borders I worked at some years ago. It all came to blows at our annual Christmas Party at a bar when the assistant manager, Wendy, and a lesbian co-worker/friend of Wendy's got into a drunken shouting match and brawl with them slugging each other.

R13

Good documentary.

I worked at the Rizzoli in the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center in the mid 90s. It was very oriented towards the Wall Street bros, but still special nonetheless. The crown jewel was the 57th Street store and the West Broadway store was the funky one. Just magical and transportive, like a trip to Europe.

Lambda Rising

Speaking of Pittsburgh, one of the best used bookstores was the Bryn Mawr Vassar bookstore. All those old bitties would die and leave fabulous stuff to be sold off there. There was also one in New Haven as well.

r30 Bryn Mawr is a suburb of Philadelphia.

The bookstores raised scholarship money for young women at those colleges and acted as alumni organizations in different places in the US. Those are the two I had experiences with, but I think there were others ones as well. I don’t know if any of them exist anymore.

B Dalton in the 80s and 90s was my favorite. They opened in my city in a former dress store in the abandoned retail distrcit of 'downtown' in the late 70s. They stated for about twenty years before closing. Though the traditional retail district was dead, they did serve the colleges, high schools and financial institutiosn within walking distance.

Before 'Borders' came in to my area, there was another bookstore chain with a similar name - I think it was Bordens or Brohens ? HUGE bookstore that was then renamed 'Borders' (but the interior stayed the same). Does anyone recall what the name of that chain was - this was around 1985 - 1990 ?

Books A Million?

While I spent considerable time in malls at both B. Dalton and Walden Books, of the two I liked Walden Books better. Staff always seemed a little more knowledgeable and the selection seemed a little better.

And yes, for some reason, Walden always seemed to have lesbian store managers.

I blew a beautiful Australian daddy in the mens room at a Borders once.

R36 Hugh Jackman?

Ha, reading the past-tense tone of some of these posts, I jumped onto Google "News" to see if B&N had shut down when I wasn't looking. News has it they're re-opening an UES location and re-opening a Chicago location. Let's hope their new managers have figured out how to make it work so they don't disappear. Actually just three weeks ago spent a couple of hours in a huge urban B&N that seemed quite busy. Yes, the closings and disappearances over the last 15 years or so are ghastly. But the big cities at least do seem able to sustain a few really good bookstores and I make a point of spreading my book bucks around the brick and mortars as well as online.

R38 Hmm, interesting - thanks for sharing.

I worked at the B&N in Lincoln Park. It was weird because both B&N and Borders had a store half a block from each other, then both closed at about the same time (the B&N now a Trader Joe's, the Borders now a Walgreens).

So many Chicago stores have closed, including the Evanston one, so it's interesting to see that Old Orchard reopened.

WaldenBooks in my local mall when I was a tween/teen. Late 80s/ early 90s, and was devouring YA fiction. Back then, the only way I would know about upcoming books was from the last page of the latest book, which would have a teaser with the upcoming book's title, and the year & month of release. So the first weekend of the month, I'd be on the bus to the mall, heading straight to WaldenBooks. The ladies there were nice and very helpful.

There was also a used bookstore in an old building downtown. Coffeehouse next door, indie music store upstairs. Early 90s, you get the idea. Anyway I would go down and just browse through the piles and shelves of books, and 14 year old me had a crush on the very beefy, beardy bear who worked there.

Around that time I had my first visit to the nearby "big" city and found their indie gay bookstore. That's a real "opening the treasure chest" moment for gay youth. Just being able to grab print copies of the region's gay newspapers provided a ton of information about other places you could go.

For years we had the wonderful independent bookstore called "Midnight Special" on the old Santa Monica Mall (which then became the Third Street Promenade).

It was like an outpost of culture in the city. There was always something going on. One could spend hours browsing among the cavernous shelves.

I am heartily ashamed that no one has mentioned Giovanni's Room in the gay section of Philly. When I was in my early 20s, growing up in PA Dutch Country (a good place to be from) that was THE place to be if you were gay and not old enough to get into the bars yet. Even though it was 2 1/2 hrs. from my hometown, I usually went there about once a month to pick up the Philly Gay News (where I learned the acronyms "FR/P, GR/A, CBT," etc) and look at the personal ads. Those were the days!

If I was feeling adventurous, I would drive down to Baltimore (pretty dangerous, back in the day) and go to the Lambda Rising in Baltimore (the main one was in DC).

That was back when gay folks stuck together more, because we knew that all we had was each other. Those were the days.

Brentano and Womrath's had locations New York,

As for present-day bookstores, in Houston, I like the Barnes and Noble on West Gray and Blue Willow off Memorial. And I like the Half Price Books on Nasa Road 1.

Borders came to the suburb where I attended university in 1999 or so. I spent HOURS there. Literally my favourite place.

For proper representation:

I also liked the lez bookstores A Room of One's Own in Madison and Women and Children First in Chicago.

I wish Borders had survived and B&N had gone away.

The original Border's in Ann Arbor was great--not huge but they had a wide ranging selection and people were allowed to bring their dogs in the store (long before that was a thing). Their larger, flagship locations were good but often had surprising gaps (like lousy mystery sections). Better selections than B&N, but B&N usually had better news stands and a better selection of travel books and maps.

Powell's began in Chicago. The one by U of Chicago was the original. They originally filled the Portland store with merch from Kay's in Cleveland which was the previous "biggest store in the US" and a place with much more character---some of the staff were artists, they kept the place a float selling porn and stuff like underground comics, and the owner was an autocratic woman who could find anything in the store. Cleveland still has some very good indie bookstores, like Loganberry on Larchmere.

I feel sorry for people who miss Walden's. They sucked as bookstores, selling predictable stuff like best sellers. I suppose if you were stuck in the suburbs, you had no choice but crappy mall stores for a lot of things, but there's no excuse for anyone old enough to go places on their own to get wistful about them.

There used to be lots of specialty bookstores. The last of the travel bookstores was in Pasadena--surviving for a long time on travel gear and web sales. Murder Inc. was a great mystery book store on the UWS and Mystery Books in DC was no slouch, either. Bigger cities usually had at least one good art or architecture bookstore---Chicago had Prairie Avenue. DC had Franz Bader.

I used to love Duttenhoffer's used book store in Cincinnati back in the '80s and '90s. Looks like it's still there. And there were a couple of huge used book stores in downtown Cincinnati, like four big floors filled with books. Great places to spend time.

R41 Opposite the Midnight Special bookstore on the open air mall in Santa Monica was the huge art, architecture and design bookstore, Hennessey & Ingalls. I'd forgotten what happened to them after they moved up Wilshire Blvd. and am pleasantly surprised to learn that they're still in business, but moved again in 2016 and are now in Downtown Los Angeles.

Back in '89, I found a great bookstore in London that only had books about film history. I wonder if it's still there? I got a beautiful picture book on Ivor Novello.

There was a little gem of a bookstore on Bleeker in the village across from Magnolia Bakery called The Biography Bookstore. Marc Jacobs purchased it and many other storefronts on Bleeker, and shockingly kept it as a Book store called Bookmarc. It’s an impeccably curated selection of fashion and arts books.

Jacobs tried doing the same thing on Melrose Place in LA. It sadly lasted a minute.

West Hollywood still has Book Soup.

.....

Barnes and Noble Union Square in the '80s when it was all remainders at bargain prices. Can't believe how cheap everything was.

Peep shows!

Crown Books was my fave. They changed locations twice & eventually became a Super Crown. One of the cool clerks used to wear a pin that said I Read Banned Books. I could spend all day in there & their sales & discounts rocked.

I also liked Booksellers because they carried porn mags like Numbers, Blueboy, Adam Gay video, & Latino Fan Club, though it was a regular bookstore. Right before that location went belly up the nice lady clerk told me about the closure, & informed me of the other location that was still open, & told me “they carry the magazines too.” I was a regular, haha.

I live in central CA and we are getting a B&N. I was so sad when Borders closed. I loved that place.

Does anyone remember Tower Books? There was a Tower Records too. The owner was Russ Solomon and he belonged to my synagogue. We’d only see him on High Holidays escorting his mother to their reserved seats at the front. Apparently, he donated $$$$.

The Last Bookstore in downtown LA rocks

I also like the Iliad in North Hollywood and Bart’s Books in Ojai

Charles Scribner's Sons on Fifth, Oscar Wilde on Christopher and A Different Light.... seems like another lifetime ago.

Baldwin‘s Book Barn between Philly and Lancaster us awesome.

I recall Baldwin's Book Barn fondly, R62. All through college I probably went there once a month with friends and came home with stacks of books.

Boston, in the late 80s or maybe early 90s, had one of the great bookstores in the country when - right off Newbury Street - they converted the Exeter Street Theater into a beautiful multi-story Waterstone's. There was a terrible fire in the late 90s that put it out of business, but there was no more beautiful or impressively stocked store than that one.

I miss A Different Light 💡 bookstore in Chelsea. I would spend an hour there before going on to Splash them a few years later to g. Rarely would I not by something before leaving- if not a book then a magazine.

John King Books in Detroit is still there and is a book lovers dream.

In NYC in the 90’s:

The original St. Mark’s Books when it was in the middle of the block next to the old St. Mark’s Baths space (I’m told historically this was actually the second location of the store, when they moved to the end of the block it was the third).

See Hear for underground fanzines and really weird independent press stuff some of it scary.

Revolution Books on the LES I think it was around Avenue B or C and 3rd street and sold hardcore political books and fanzines and squatter newsletters and held regular activist and political meetings (really intense place!)

Gay Treasures which was next door to A Different Light in its original 90’s location and had a mind blowing collection of old school gay-oriented books and records and vintage porn, museum-level inventory bursting at the seems, all mostly categorized and searchable. A wild ride.

These were just a few of the special places in the city that stick out in my mind. None of them were necessarily comfortable bookstores but were the places you went to find interesting things before the internet changed everything.

Chicago had a Rizzoli in Water Tower Place on Michigan Ave, and later a huge Borders just across the street. They and Virgin Records (also on Michigan Ave) were among my first stops whenever I visited the city. Rizzoli closed in 2000, Virgin in 2007, Borders in 2011. I still miss 'em.

Unabridged in Chicago was my favorite.

Unabridged is still there!

Palm Springs *just* got a new local bookstore. It's very nice, if a bit simple at the moment (it just opened).

There's a cute guy with a sexy British accent - his voice and very flirty demeanor will undoubtedly be lifting a lot of caftans!

I will say in all seriousness they were able to get a book for me quickly. And I'd much rather order via them and pay an extra few $$ to support a local store, vs. having Amazon deliver a book to me. It may cost less, but Amazon sucks, number one, and they also are not always a guarantee of quality. A friend bought a new book via Amazon for my Christmas gift, and it arrived looking quite worn. So, here's to local bookstores!

Does Unabridged still carry porn?

Is the Unabridged basement still somewhat cruisy? LOL

I loved Borders. It was a great place to meet guys and have sex in the men's room. Before cameras. Those were the days!

The Strand in NYC. Still there. A legend.

R87, thank you for reminding me of See Hear. I wonder if fanzines will ever come back. Maybe at some point people will tire of the virtual world and want a physical object to hold in their hands again.

R20 she should have just squatted like she was looking at books on the bottom shelf a half hour before heading out to shop- bookstore bathroom problem solved.

This thread is bringing back such wonderful memories of spending money meant for clothes on books at the independent bookstores of Western Mass and yes WaldenBooks. Walden may have been a mall chain, but they had a large and diverse LGTB section back in the 1980s.