Birth of a New Bookstore in My Neighborhood!

It is a lovely, light-filled space in beautiful downtown Sausalito, looking out on boats bobbing in the sparkling water. It is a brand new bookstore, Book Passage, a branch of the mothership a few miles north in Corte Madera (a local treasure for many years), and a cause for great celebration! I walked into the shop a couple of days ago with great delight. A new independent bookstore in the area is good news indeed! After years of hearing the sad news of many bookstores closing, there has been a recent resurgence of such stores. Hurray! I have long been a frequent customer of the Corte Madera Book Passage, a large bookstore a few miles north of where I live, with many readings and other events going on all the time; it is one of the two bookstores that I most regularly patronize (the other is Books, Inc., in Laurel Village in San Francisco, near where I teach), although of course I go to many other bookstores when possible. The new store is, as I said, in Sausalito, which is the next town over from ours. Although smaller than the Corte Madera store, this new store will continue the tradition of readings, although on a smaller scale, about two or more a week, as the manager, Jeff, told me on my visit to the Sausalito store. The store only opened in February of this year, but both locals and tourists are taking notice, and as we approach the peak tourist months, Jeff hopes, as do I, that many of these tourists will visit the store. I wish the store great success, and I plan to be a regular visitor and customer there. (Please forgive the giddy tone of this post, but I am very excited both by the opening of this specific bookstore in this specific location near where I live, and by what it represents in terms of the survival and growth of bookstores in an age when they were thought to be dying out.)