In an unsurprising move, the Dollar Bookstore will be shutting its doors permanently this December 24th. Its nearly 60k+ square feet of book madness will be missed by the random locals like myself and the waves of tourists and visitors to the Long Beach convention center directly across Pine Avenue, the main thoroughfare. The following picture is from the stairway of the Convention Center, looking down on the corner establishment, originally a Borders bookstore:
It has easily been my most favorite non-beach location to visit in Long Beach. The shelving did originally have a system. First edition hardbacks to one side of the front section, paperback fiction between the entrance and the hardbacks:
Romance paperbacks against the yellow wall with sci-fi, fantasy, multi-cultural, and literature shelved in front of the yellow wall, leading to the steps down to the back two-thirds:
At the bottom of the steps was the comic book section. With each comic costing a dollar, you've found one of the few NON-deal sections. I did, though, find and purchase a Deathmate: Black, the hottest comic around back in 1992-3 when I was collecting--it was the first appearance of Gen 13.
Turning away from the comics affords a view of the rest of the place. Stretching back into the distance the sectional organization begins to break down:
Some sections are labeled non-fiction, others history, some biography...I haven't even shown pictures of the religious or self-help or travel-book areas. All the way back against the back yellow wall is the sports section, a place I would go to look for one book specifically, but usually found the occasioanl gem.
In the picture below, against the gray/beige wall on the right side used to be the OLD books, the antiques. That was where I discovered Chandler Brossard among other forgotten treasures:
The cartons in the foreground of the above picture belie the truth: they are getting ready to be "relocated."
In our final trip together, Corrie and I found nine books to purchase. Each represented a different facet of the awesome discoveries that were made by those willing to search. Here's a picture of all nine:
It may seem like random collection of forgotten objects, and it is. But here's a closer look at each row and how each fit into the larger picture of our Dollar Bookstore as the book p-trap on this continent's edge, saving all random publications...
The top row seen above is made up of three books. On the right is a hardbound National Geographic production of Yosemite material. It is a beautiful publication. Many of these encyclopedic-like items filled the shelves of many an elder, and in the years since these elders have passed, books like these eventually float on down to our DB. No advertisements, beautiful color photos, smartly put together. Only a buck.
In the middle above is something called "The Yankee Pioneers: A Saga of Courage". It is a tiny history book resembling something available at my elementary school library. It turns out the writer, Sam Pettengill, was a congressman from Indiana and was a descendant of Ol' Man Pettengill, a settler who was one of the early colonizers of the newly formed Vermont territory. This little book explains in painstaking detail what the first thirty-or-so years of settling the endless forests of New England was like. Have you ever wondered how long it took to go from "nearest neighbor five-to-ten miles away" to "first street larger than a trail laid down in a 'town'"? That's the kind of information detailed here. Wild. (Turns out that out it took between 25 and 35 years.)
That first book, the red one of the left, isn't a book per se. It is the London Museum's booklet/informational packet for the Rosetta Stone, detailing the importance of, creation of, and rediscovery of said stone tablet. It was such a dense and beautiful little booklet that I had a hard time putting it back. When I saw the original price the museum was charging, I decided to get it myself. It was marked at 5 pound-sterling. There are the occasional program from ballgames or European operas found among the piles at our DB, this one was likely the most beautifully produced.
The middle row has another three books that represent different types of discoveries. The first is disgraced crooked NBA referee Tim Donaghy's "side of the story". This isn't a POD book or a personally published material, but those exist in numbers (it always amazes me how many people have their written material printed as books across the country). This book exists in the even smaller margins of mixing "mostly major publisher backing and non-athlete sports pariah" with "vanity/self-promotion purposes". His side of the story is very interesting to me, and what he has to say about the integrity of NBA games has my head tilted.
To get a sense of the weird duality of this book, the "serious book" versus "personal publication" category fight, see: 1) the forward is written by Phil Scala, the retired fed that brought down John Gotti; and 2) on the back cover it directs readers "For more information visit www.timdonaghy.com".
I'm using it as a gift for an NBA-fan relative.
The middle book above was a limited release edition written by Tripp Underwood, bass player for The Unseen, an LA punk band. It has its original cellophane cover, yellow sticker proudly announcing the limited release status and what else is included--exclusive music tracks. This is another side to the wares found at our Dollar Bookstore. If The Unseen were more famous, this cellophane wrapped book would be worth far more than the dollar I spent on it. It started out, I hear, as a history of the ban written for the band's site. Tripp was offered a book deal to expand it, and now it has a tour diary component. Good for him, and good for them. I'll be checking it out pretty soon.
The book on the right, if you can't make it out, is As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. Another aspect of the Dollar Bookstore: the random classic. I got this because it was only a buck. It gives me something to take to work and hand out to receptive young people and not worry about seeing it again, as well as another Faulkner book to peruse. (I stopped reading Sanctuary a while back...)
The last row, seen above, has three books that seem like they would be in place in a normal used book store if not a regular Barnes & Nobles. The wear they've incurred make the Barnes & Nobles quip seem suspect, but anyway...
Living in a Nutshell is a beautiful little book about design that focuses on solutions for homes that are small. Corrie liked it. "On the Rocks" is a collection of short stories culled from writers who joined the KGB Bar writer's group. There are some name-recognition writers listed, which makes this a nice risk as a gift. The KGB Bar is in Manhattan.
Uppity Women of Ancient Time, another gift, is one from a series of humorous renditions of historical figures and the context from which they came. It's perfect for a strong-willed and outspoken girl cousin of mine.
Those three books are interesting enough, but we may not have bit on any of them had they cost more than a dollar each, right? I'm not spending six dollars on a used copy of As I Lay Dying unless it's obviously a collector's item. But one dollar?
That's also one of the real problems concerning the sustainability of the Dollar Bookstore of Downtown Long Beach. I am a local, regular customer. In the three or four years I've known about the bookstore I've bought probably an entire shopping cart full of books. I hand them out as gifts or use them to pad my library with their importance. It's quite unbelievable what I've been able to find.
I'm also a total book nerd, and have learned about publishers old and new, large and small...this store was an index of the long lost, the long forgotten, the neglected.
This sustainability problem I just mentioned is this: I don't think I've spent a hundred bucks total since I've started going. Certainly not more than two-hundred, but let's use that as a cap. I'm a regular visitor and patron, buying all sorts of things, but in all that time, all those visits, I've haven't spent more than $200.
That always seemed like a hard balance to create: the kind of revenue generated by selling rectangles of paper for a buck each just seems insufficient to support over 60k square feet of retail space in an-up-and-coming commercial area of Downtown Long Beach. Time seems to have supported that hypothesis.
This spot, for a bookworm like me, was always too good to be true. I have enjoyed it as much as possible, even to the chagrin of my wonderful wife. It shall be wistfully remembered.
$20 on My Library
The following pictures show off, using arrows, how books from the Dollar Bookstore can be seen populating my shelves:
I found Camus' The Fall there, as well as all my Richard Flanagan copies. Gould's Book of Fish I found at least twice and bought it each time I was there, no matter what. I used them as gifts.
If you can't see, on the left is Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Woody Allen's Without Feathers. They also had a nice collection of Guterson and the only copy of a Mishima book they've ever had.
I picked up both copies of Catlin's work in the Wild West (his paintings and letters are as beautiful as they are important). They also had the Ishii book, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and the book of Japanese Fairy Tales.
Lot's of Russian revolutionary material was available, as was the Titanic sequel and a book by George Pelecanos, a major contributor and writer for The Wire.
Just perusing my shelves means the memory of the Dollar Bookstore will never die in our household. It has played an integral part of my understanding of how cool Long Beach is, and a little piece of unbelievable magic will perish at 10 pm on 12/24/2014, when the doors shut for the last time.
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