Ack! Another Independent Bookstore Bites the Dust

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bookslover

Puritan Board Doctor
The quirky, musty, strange, and thoroughly wonderful Acres of Books in my hometown (Long Beach, California) is going under after 74 years. Approximately 1,000,000 volumes in 12,000 square feet of space, it was founded by Bertram Smith in 1934, and his family still runs it. It's been at its current location "only" since the early 1960s. I've been prowling its weathered shelves since the late 1960s, when I was a teenager.

It's a general-interest store, with a religion section that's now fairly small - it was better 20 or 30 years ago. But you'll find every conceivable kind of book at Acres of Books - some of which have been sitting in their exact same places on the shelves for as long as I've been patronizing it.

It's the same story: rising rents, redevelopment all around it, internet sales luring its clientele away. They'd like to move somewhere else, but few people think it's going to happen.

I'm going to have to get down there and do some serious shopping pretty soon...

Aargh! :(
 
I visited Acres of Books a few months ago. It's sad to hear of a long-standing, family owned business closing its doors.
 
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