Not a soccer mom

I suppose it is indicative of how insular and community-centred we are that when I see a story about another tragedy in Iraq or Darfur I feel, momentarily, sad but in a resigned sort of way. But when I opened the newspaper this morning and saw that Cody’s bookshop on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley was going to close, I was literally shocked.

Cody’s, and the lifestyle it represents, was one of the reasons we chose to come here. The majority of the many books we have bought since we moved here have been bought there (or, admittedly, in its more upmarket store on Fourth Street). I can stroll down there on a Saturday morning to buy the Financial Times or the LA Times, and inevitably pick up an intriguing-looking book at the same time.

The store is losing money and the owner says the relatively seedy neighbourhood is putting customers off.

I am in the middle of researching a piece on the art world and therefore encountering extremely wealthy people who spend extremely high sums of money on art. I can’t help thinking how good it would be if some of that went on supporting the better independent book shops instead.

I fear though, that in the age of Amazon, contemporary art is the better investment.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Archives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.