We overslept our planned leaving time.
But it is a holiday, fr goodness sake!
Groggy, but refreshed with caffeine, each through our preferred modality, and some fruit for breakfast, Jan & I turned off of Highway 1 to 17 and crossed the mountains to San Jose and on to our featured pass through for the day, the legendary Berkeley.
We parked on Telegraph Avenue (thanks to it being the 4th of July and the light traffic), and spent a half an hour at Moe’s. I’d worked there briefly in the eighties and to this day consider it the greatest bookstore of my personal experience. At least for the area of my primary interest. It and Black Oak, another Berkeley store, are the only bookshops I’ve ever encountered with a substantial used selection of general and scholarly books on Buddhism. If I wander into a used bookstore I fully expect to find no book I am unfamiliar with and rarely one I wish to own that I don’t already possess. Never so at Moe’s. I carried a large pile to the cashier where they shipped my treasures home.
We walked down Telegraph Avenue
to the campus and back, where Jan spent some happy time at both Rasputin’s and Amoeba. She left both record shops with treasures of her own.
Ah, memories… Some, actually good…
We had a quick lunch at a little Korean restaurant and then drove up to Shattuck’s “Gourmet Ghetto” planning on spending an equal amount of time at Black Oak Books. Black Oak had been founded by three people who had worked at Moe’s about the same time I was there, Bob Baldock, Bob Brown & Don Pretari. Following Moe’s business model of high end general and scholarly used books, supplemented with a wide range of new and remaindered books although even there with an emphasis on literary, they carved out a substantial slot as Moe’s only real competition.
We were shocked to arrive and find the store empty and large “for lease” signs up.
Turns out the market had hit the store hard, they were swimming in debt, no longer able to meet the steep rents ($16,000 a month) and were on the verge of closing it last year when an angel stepped in, purchased the store and tried to reshape it to meet the new markets. Didn’t work. The store closed in June. There is a warehouse somewhere and official plans to open another brick and mortar shop somewhere in Berkeley, but the skilled used book buyers are all gone, so, whatever reopens with that name I have no hopes for the store I loved being resuscitated.
I hadn’t thought about it, but I assume Moe’s survived in large part because they own their building. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re working with less staff, as well, at least during these hard times. But I rather doubt they’ll be shuttering their doors anytime soon. In fact we saw posters announcing their fiftieth anniversary celebration…
May Moe’s flourish for another fifty, at least!
Shaken by confronting that empty store front I didn’t even feel like walking around the corner to the site of the original Peet’s Coffee house. Nothing to see there, anyway. The original funky roaster location is today just another of their chain stores. But, there are two holy spots for me regarding coffee. That location is where I first encountered serious coffee. And, of course, the Mediterranean on Telegraph Avenue (famous as a location spot in the Graduate) where I first sipped a latte.
So, with broken hearts, we climbed back into the car and headed north.
When we hit Cotati we turned onto 116 and drove through Sebastopol to Guerneville where we once owned a bookshop (the location which in our time was a small space above a laundromat is now what looked like a private apartment above a real estate office), followed the Russian River to the coast and headed north.
We are now in Fort Bragg, shaking the sand out of our eyes and slowly getting ready to take off up the coast…
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