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Posted Aug 26, 2016, 3:32 AM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 6,729
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^ the owner is still in the phase of clearing out the one story bldg that once stood there. Cesar90 has captured the first good image in this thread of that corner with the bldg now mostly gone. It took longer than originally announced to shutter all the stores on that site & begin tearing the bldg down, but the work finally has happened!
as for mojeda, he has captured the first pic in this thread of the old blue jeans store on broadway, with its extremely worn out facade, now covered up & under active renovation.
I've waited yrs & yrs for such changes to occur. In the meantime, I hope that ppl like cedd moses.....who has otherwise helped revive dt with all his bars....stop slowing down plans for the apt tower at 4th & hill st. When the small taco house bldg that currently stands there is finally torn down, that will be another day when I can breathe a sigh of relief.
Quote:
The Last Bookstore, Symbol of L.A.’s Literary Renaissance
Nobody in Los Angeles reads, right? They’re all just running up and down Sunset Boulevard, thrusting scripts into producers’ hands. It’s a coming-of-age story about a young woman who discovers the meaning of love at an ISIS training camp.…
And nobody writes either, at least nothing longer than an Instagram post about spotting one of the Kardashian/Jenner demon spawn picking at a sliver of fat-reduced burrata, seasoned with a puff of scented air from Micronesia, on the patio of the Ivy. Does that sound true to you? If it does, you probably haven’t been to the Southland since Woody Allen made Annie Hall. And you certainly haven’t been to The Last Bookstore.
Located on the still-gritty stretch of downtown that abuts Skid Row, The Last Bookstore is a potent symbol of the resurgent literary fortunes of Los Angeles. It has also become one of the finest independent bookstores in the nation, rivaling acknowledged greats like the Elliott Bay Book Company (Seattle), Pegasus Books (Berkeley), Politics & Prose (where else but Washington, D.C.?), Tattered Cover (Denver), Greenlight (Brooklyn) and Three Lives & Company (Manhattan). That’s my list. You probably have your own. Whatever else is on it, The Last Bookstore should be too.
Every great bookstore has a story, and The Last Bookstore’s is now the subject of an expert 12-minute documentary by Chad Howitt that focuses on Josh Spencer, who opened his first store in 2009. He’d been selling books online for about a decade, as he continued to struggle with the aftermath of a 1996 car accident that robbed him of the ability to walk. The venture proved surprisingly successful, allowing Spencer to open a store that was more than just a domain name.
Now in its second location, The Last Bookstore occupies the vast ground floor (as well as parts of the second) of the Crocker-Citizens National Bank building, where it sells about 250,000 titles, according to store manager Katie Orphan, who estimates that there are another 200,000 titles in a warehouse. About 80 percent of those, she believes, are used.
“You’re constantly hearing about the death of tangible books and a dropping literacy rate, so once I discovered the bookstore, it was like some sort of paradox,” says Howitt, the film’s director, whose primary occupation is shooting commercials. “Like it was breaking rules of space and time to exist. It’s massive, in the heart of downtown LA, and it’s always extremely busy.”
The Last Bookstore is a sign that while the days of Charles Bukowski pulling up to the King Eddy Saloon are long gone, plenty of readers and writers are calling Los Angeles home these days. What’s more, they’re creating something many thought was inimical to this city of freeways and strip malls: a genuine community.
When I ran Page Views, the literary blog of the New York Daily News, we mocked the literary scene in Los Angeles. We were answered, in the pages of the Los Angeles Times, by Hector Tobar, who wrote, “It’s a city where a new American literature is being born. It’s a city with a literary scene where all sorts of strange influences mix together (a little bit of Korea, a little bit of Mexico, a little bit of Iowa, a little bit of everywhere). On the other hand, maybe that’s all just a bit too exotic, spicy and unexpected for your New York tastes.”
I happily admit that Tobar is right.
Former Los Angeles Times book critic David Ulin wrote me in an email, “The Last Bookstore is a great bookstore, but it’s not a symbol of renewal, except perhaps the more general renewal of downtown. The literary culture? That’s been with us all along.”
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