Washington Square North Beach Walking Tour November 14th, 2024
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By Annie Xia | Nov. 16, 2024 4:00 a.m. - San Francisco Chronicle
Nestled in the Castro district, Fabulosa Books represents the “gayborhood” on its shelves. At Booksmith’s Haight Street location, customers are open to something “absolutely weird.” In Noe Valley, Omnivore Books on Food is stocked with contemporary and antique cookbooks, everything from a new release on Korean banchan to a 1951 book on eggs.
“One of the wonderful things about San Francisco are all the neighborhoods, and I feel like the stores that survived and are thriving are the ones that reflect the people that live there,” said Luisa Smith, buying director of Book Passage, which has locations at the San Francisco Ferry Building and in Corte Madera. “If we all had the same books, it would be difficult to have so many stores.”
To explore San Francisco’s literary milieu, the Chronicle scraped Google Maps data and scoured recommendation lists to compile a slate of independent sellers. We contacted more than two dozen, then we zoomed in on five that have distinctive identities: Book Passage, Booksmith, Fabulosa Books, Medicine for Nightmares and Omnivore Books on Food.
We talked to each store’s lead buyers, who sift through thousands of new releases. While the bookstores reflect their communities, they also follow their employees’ interests and passions, apparent in the books on the shelves and especially those that earn rave shelf-sign reviews or dogged-hand selling.
While space limits can be restrictive, all the buyers agreed that even if their stores had infinite square footage, they wouldn’t want to carry everything. What they have — and what they don’t — helps craft each store’s unique character.
“There’s not a section on real estate development or how to exploit your neighborhood,” said Josiah Luis Alderete, co-founder of Medicine for Nightmares in the Mission District.
“We don’t really have ‘how to be a capitalist business’ kind of books,” fellow founder Tân Khánh Cao added.
Here’s how five local book buyers quietly shape what San Francisco reads, one shipment at a time.
Meet five S.F. booksellers that are shaping the city’s literary landscape
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