∞ Barnes and Noble (or, in Berkeley, Ignoble)

447 Words filed by Frank @ 16:35 | 28-Mar-07 in bookstores |

I ran across an article a few weeks back in the Berkeley Daily Planet that delivered the news that the Barnes & Noble on Shattuck and Durant will close its doors for good on May 31. There followed the usual sighs of relief from independent booksellers like Pegasus (across the street from B&N, on the east side of Shattuck) and Moe’s.

I could insert here the Alison Bechdel 1990s used bookstore versus evil chain “Bunns & Noodle” trope, but I see that even Bechdel has some good things to say about B&N nowadays.

The owner of Moe’s was quoted in the Daily Planet as saying, “Moeâ€™s is like a theatre to the mind. Itâ€™s clean, bright and lovely, an absolute pleasure to be in.”

Well, sorry to say, but Moe’s isn’t an absoute pleasure to be in. It’s stuffy, cramped, has narrow aisles, and its system of organization is at best idiosyncratic, at worst chaotic. The counter staff seem to be surly when they’re in good moods, hostile when they’re not. If the store’s crowded, which it can frequently be because there are no other large bookstores in the area, it’s no fun at all.

Moe’s has a wealth of fascinating used books, and it’s a fun place to browse, because it’s got four floors of them. But if you’re looking for new books, which would presumably be the main point of competition with a store like B&N, it’s another story.

I really, really don’t like the policy B&N’s counter staff have of having to constantly ask you whether you have a B&N Member card yet. I would agree with Moe’s owner that the fountain in the middle of the Berkeley B&N store was unnecessary.

I’m not a B&N booster, particularly. But I could find good, informative, fascinating tech books there — books on Web design, for instance — and buy them without having to wait for Amazon shipping.

I’m sure that there are good bookstores on Fourth Street that I haven’t explored (though how many of them are independent bookstores?). But if you don’t have a car or bike at the ready, west Berkeley is not a short trip from downtown.

So at the risk of sounding counterrevolutionary, I will miss B&N not being in downtown Berkeley. And I still miss Cody’s, which closed last July (Cody’s still has a store on Fourth and Virginia, but the store on Telegraph and Haste was its flagship). It did have an excitingly heterodox collection of new books, and its absence left a huge hole in downtown Berkeley that has yet to be filled. ★

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