The post yesterday got me to thinking of all the things about my old life that I missed. The list is long and depressing and not worth posting, but there was one thing that stood out as a particular loss, to me at any rate...
Bookstores.
I have a huge library of art and design books that I've amassed over the past twenty years. I could happily spend hours shuffling through the stacks at Hennessey + Ingalls or Book Soup. Or any number of the great museum or gallery stores.
That's not really an option here.
Bakersfield isn't exactly what you would call a "book town".
As far as I knew, there were only really two choices, Borders and Barnes & Noble. Scratch that, one choice - the Borders closed a couple of months ago before I ever found it, a victim of corporate bankruptcy. I first discovered the Barnes & Noble when a client suggested we meet there for coffee. Only in Bakersfield would a Barnes & Noble be thought of first as just a really big Starbucks.
I have to say, I was impressed. The store was huge, and after my brief meeting I decided to stick around and check out the selection. I asked a clerk where I might find the art books. She shot me a look as if I'd just asked her where they kept the pornography. I suppose I could see her point; with fine art and photography books, you always run the risk of turning a page and being confronted by a wayward breast or worse. She pointed me to the back wall, and there it was... the "art/design/architecture/photography/fashion" section, all contained on one three foot wide bookshelf. An awful lot of the shelf space was actually dedicated to scrapbooking, which I wasn't aware had been elevated to a fine art. I left the store dejected.
And then awhile back I heard about an independent bookstore, the "best in Bakersfield" I was told. It turned out it wasn't far from the house, so one day when I found myself with time on my hands (a common occurrence) I decided to go check it out.
Oy vey.
The entire front third of the store was devoted to Wingnut Welfare, all the greatest hits from Sarah Palin, George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter and on and on. All displayed on tables with more American flags than the Washington Monument. I quickly rushed past all that, being careful not to touch anything, to the back of the store where I assumed, from prior experience, they kept the degenerate books.
But the back third of the store was devoted to a slightly different genre of publications... Evangelical Christian comic books!
I had never seen anything like it and, quite frankly, never knew such a thing existed. I guess it's for people who find the actual Bible too confusing and hard to follow. It was odd, to say the least, to see familiar Bible scenes rendered as manga and Jesus pumped up like a Marvel superhero. Judging from the covers he's evidently developed quite a few new superpowers since I went through Confirmation classes.
I turned tail to leave, never bothering to discover what was sandwiched between the Republicans and SuperJesus. Just for fun I thought of maybe asking the clerk where their "gay sexuality" section was, but then I thought better of it and ran.
I saw on the news not long ago that the store had had to downsize. I'm guessing they just eliminated the non-Rightwing middle section of the store.
At the end of the day, I suppose it's not much use lamenting the loss of bookstores. This may be one instance where Bakersfield is actually ahead of the trend. I fear even the big city bookstores are no match for our new Amazonian e-book overlords. They say 25% of book sales are now for e-books and by the end of the decade many publishers may forego the hassle and expense of producing actual, physical books at all. I find that extremely sad. While there's really no substitution for viewing real art in person, running your hands over an oversized glossy print in a book wasn't half bad. Viewing it at 72dpi on a smartphone seems to me quite a loss and not much of a future.
