The Upstart Crow: A Pioneering Bookstore

Yesterday I wrote to recommend Lewis Buzbee's book, "The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop." In that book, Buzbee writes about the first bookstore where he worked many years ago, in San Jose, California. When I saw the bookstore's name, I gave a start of recognition; it brought back memories from 30 years ago. Soon after I moved to San Francisco from Michigan, my parents moved to Fresno, California, also from Michigan. On one of my first visits to Fresno, they took me to a bookstore they had discovered there, one that included a cafe, of all things: Upstart Crow! It was a member of a small chain of bookstores. (The source of the name, according to Buzbee, was an envious contemporary of Shakespeare, who scornfully dubbed him an "upstart crow"). As Buzbee tells it, "Decades ahead of other book retailers," Upstart Crow created bookstores with "foreign periodicals, chessboards, plenty of big tables and comfy chairs" and a cafe. Now, of course, all of these features are old hat, but at the time we were amazed and impressed by the combination of a bookstore and a cafe: What a very clever idea!