For pretty much five months I have been carrying around five bags of mostly hardcover books, probably most in the area of psychology, intending to try to sell them to one of the few remaining individually owned bookstores in Los Angeles County, specifically in West Hollywood. It's been there since 1970, which to give perspective, was my sophomore year in high school back in the Bronx. All these years later, it still has the feeling and scents of the Age of Aquarius. You walk in and first view is of many hanging chimes and a plethora of incense. The books, they are about everything, psychology, philosophy, Eastern Religions, Western Religions, mysticism. I particularly always loved the well used wood floors that creaked as you went from one stack to another. Probably many of the books I wanted to sell back to them, were ones I had bought there in the first place, or in my other favorite bookseller, Book Soup.
I got the name of the used bookseller maven at the store when I went by there one time unannounced. By then they had closed the actual annex for the used books. I did not think much of it.
Finally, the other day I got back there and spoke to him. Not only were they not buying used books any longer, but the long established and surviving Bodhi Tree Bookstore, a fixture in our community, is closing. The owners sold the building. They are "hoping" for a new location.
To Bodhi Tree Bookstore Friends,
Good Gifts, Good Cheer
Purchases $200 and over receive
an additional 5% discount.
Come visit us. This will be our last Holiday Season
in this location.
We will be open to the end of December.We are continuing to talk to people interested in
the Bodhi Tree Bookstore legacy.
We are hopeful for a reincarnation of a physical store
in a few months in a new location.
Phil and Stan 12-7-11
I took my five bags and wended my way to Goodwill where I donated them and got a tax receipt. I admit, my sense of charity about books was not quite what it is for other things. I was hoping for cash for my hardcovers. I suspect the deducttion won't begin to cover what I spent, like 20 to 20 dollars on average, a pop. Oh, well, easy come and easy go. But now a days, I have to be less of a spendthrift for the obvious reason that my incoming cash flow just isn't what it used to be.
Driving around town that same day, along Sunset, I passed another place that "used to be". Back in the early 80s, it was a really hip restaurant, Scandia. I ate there once. After many a year in business, it went by the boards and now is just another building with a history people may or may not remember.
Places are memory joggers. If they haven't changed for a long period, you get the feeling they never will. And that is comforting when you see your life speeding by. It is tomorrow what it was yesterday when you were there. And then when it's gone, a sense of safety for a solid frame of reference, is gone also. And the loss even chips a little bit at the memory.
I began thinking of various places that are gone now, that I thought would always be there because they had been for so long. Markers of my life and many before mine. You know that moment in Back to the Future when Marty McFly notices that a picture of him and his family is disappearing piece by piece until only he remains? It is kind of like that. As defining places of defined moments disappear, a little chill goes down my back, along with a sense of final loss that no new memories will be made in that location in its former incarnation.
So, I guess I want to pay my tribute to those places about to be lost to the next generation, and those that already are:
The Hamburger Hamlet in Beverly Hills off Sunset. Gee, this is where I saw my first Los Angeles celebrity, Michael Callan, in a discrete corner. About to close.
Carlos and Charlie's also once of Sunset Boulevard had this really amazing tuna based dip. I saw one of many performances of Joan Rivers there, in my early years as an attorney in Los Angeles. I used to make sure to take out of town friends for a kind of nouveau Mexican. And great Margaritas.
Also on Sunset, Tower Records. Big barn compact disc and movies. Both sides of the street. My friend Mr. Anonymous of the Deluxe Furnished Barbara Judith apartments saw my fave Pierce Brosnan there flipping through titles. One side is rented. The other languishes still may years later.
Perino's on Wilshire. A nice old style cozy ristorante. Now it's an apartment building and not a very stylish one at that. It is NEXT to a stylish old building.
The Fairfax Theatre, corner of Fairfax Avenue and Beverly. They tried to keep it, that old movie house, for a while it was kind of an art film place. But it is more important to have another pre-fabricated condo building near the Grove.
The Pan Pacific Theatre on Beverly Boulevard. By the time I moved to LA in 1981, it was really a shell, the last major thing that had happened to it was the filming of a really bad movie, Xanadu. This, I saw in New Rochelle. I admit to liking the title theme. In the days before I had a car, I was walking down the block as it was burning down, surrounded by a black smoke cloud. It was arson.
Back in the day, probably before I moved there, but I remember passing it, was Flipper's, a disco roller rink that Cher owned. Corner of LaCienega and Santa Monica. Today it is a more traditional item, a Rite Aid.
More recently, my dad's (and uncle's) favorite supermarket, Jon's on Fountain and Santa Monica, was closed, not because it did not have really good business, but because, yes, they are building a new condo building on the site.
Oh, I probably have ten or twenty more, but you get the picture. Nothing lasts forever. Change is the order of things. You wish the change is for something better. Sometimes, it is. Often it is not.
Either way, there is a little sadness.
Well, Book Soup also has a comfortingly creaky wood floor. Maybe I'll go over there tomorrow and rustle about. I think it will make me feel better.
No comments:
Post a Comment