Used Bookstores in San Diego?

"Don Tuite" wrote in message
...
On 22 Jan 2004 16:29:42 -0800, (Zspider)
wrote:

I've got some business out at the North Island naval base
next week. If the meeting lets out early, I thought I
might go to a used bookstore or two. Any suggestions?
Right now I'm sorta partial to the old paperback originals
like Gold Medal that were popular in the Fifties.

Any other places I should visit? I've been there a few
times so I'll probably pass on Balboa Park.

Thanks, Michael

Geez! There's a whole street of used bookstores in a semi-rundown
suburban neighborhood there. It's been ten years or so, or I'd
remember the location better.

It sounds to me as though you are thinking
about the Adams street area of San Diego.
That represented a noble attempt to start a
bookstore/antique district in a fairly seedy area
on Adams Street, a couple of miles north of
downtown, with most of the stores sitting
east of the 805 freeway. Unfortunately,
quite a few shops there have already gone
out of business.

The best bookstore there is the Adams Street
Bookstore. It is a large place, with quite a few
rooms and an actual staff of employees, something
you don't find in most used and out-of-print bookstores.
They specialize in classics and a number of non-fiction
areas, including history, art, philosoply and religion.
The store is extremely well-organized. The hitch
is their prices are generally high, which makes
sense, since their overhead would obviously be
considerably higher than that in a more typical
used book store, which is often owned and run
by one person with maybe a couple of part time
helpers. If you like to look for those vastly
underpriced treasures, though, the Adams
Street Bookstore is not your best bet. They
know their stuff.

The Adams street area also features the
Prince and the Pauper bookstore, reputedly
the best-stocked store west of the Mississippi
for collectors of rare children's books.
According to what I have heard, their prices
are also are very high because they have so
many collectibles that can't be found anyplace
else, at least not in Southern California.

Other than that, there are two or three other
used bookstores of no particular distinction
left in the area. I can't imagine that the
original poster would have much luck with his
paperback book hunting in the Adams Street
neighborhood--none of the stores up there
specialize in vintage paperbacks, though a
couple of the shops might have have a very
limited selection of them.

The only other place I am aware of where you
can find several used bookstores more or
less clustered in a San Diego area is the
University Avenue/Hillcrest neighborhood.
I don't remember seeing any notable
selections of vintage paperbacks there
either..

Beyond what you find in those two
neighborhoods, the rest of the bookstores
(in the entire county, as a matter of fact)
are pretty well scattered.

What I have found is that, in addion to
what seems to be happening on Adams,
far more used bookstores are going out
of business than are being started. Why,
I don't know, but perhaps the net could be
one reason. Some used bookstores would
to get buy on people having to sell
books at far below what most people would
call a fair price, because there were few
if any other venues a customer could
conveniently get to.

Now people with good books to sell (at
least computer-literate people) can sell
them on the net, or at least price them out
on the net in order to see if the dealer is
offering anything close to a fair price.
Maybe that situation is putting some of
the marginal stores out of business.

For whatever reason, the used book
business seems to be very chancy in
San Diego county these days. For
instance, a couple of years back there
used to be several used bookstores
in Carlsbad (a coastal town North of
San Diego). Now all that is left up there
is one of those miserable little "book
traders" which only deal in popular
paperbacks.


I swear one place had an 11th
Brittanica for a few hundred. If I hadn't been living on a boat at
the time, I'd have bought it. One store was entirely kiddie-lit. I
could have bought all the Swallows and Amazons in the original issue.

Google or Yahoo Yellow Page for it, or ask at the base, but don't miss
it! It's better than Hawthorne in Portland.

Don

Book Broker also has a decent stock, but the store is not as large as Adams
Avenue. I wouldn't bother with any of the others on that street.

In Hillcrest, there's Bountiful Books, Fifth Avenue Books, and what used to be
Jospeh Tabler but is now something with Blue in the title (Blue Door? Blue
Stocking?).

Wahrenbrock's downtown is also pretty huge, but like Adams Avenue they can be
pricy.

A list of sellers, including a map, can be found at:

http://www.sdbooks.org/


--
"Justice is as strictly due between neighbor nations as between neighbor
citizens. A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang, as when
single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang."

--Benjamin Franklin

Bluestocking Books was open when I visited in Jan. 2003. Pleasant but nothing
exciting for a collector.

Don Alexander