In addition to my quest for the ultimate bookstore in San Francisco, or, if I’m brave, the Bay Area, I have found modes of comparison in other markets. I have spoken before about Elliot Bay Book Company at an old counting house in Seattle, but there was one in San Diego as well, called Upstart Crow & Co. I have found bookstores across the miles that draw me, despite or because of all surroundings. Which explains the demise of the tourism of Portzline.
When I proposed the idea of knowing a city by its independent bookstores to my therapist, she suggested that I research the idea to make sure that it hadn’t been done before. I finally got the opportunity to do that research last weekend, and it led me to a book on Amazon.com called “Bookstore Tourism,” by Larry Portzline, a man who had provided tourists in Greenwich Village and Washington, D.C. with tours of the indies of those areas, and he was so fired up that he wanted to start a movement of indie bookstore tourism across the United States. When I went to his website, however, I found that he had bitten off more than he could chew, and was giving up…
http://bookstoretourism.blogspot.com/
Was it because he wanted the world to sing in perfect harmony, instead of just one city? But the draw is so enticing…when I think of Seattle or San Diego and my tome adventures stand out squarely in front of those cities in my mind like a Hollywood sign. And then I want to tour the West Coast.
Easy, sailor.
So we start with a City.
And then, maybe move to another one, and not set it up as a guide, but as a memoir. For more people seem to want to visit where memoirs have been, than guidebooks. Ask Hemingway in his clean and well-lighted place.
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