Red Room Where the Writers Are

When I found out that this week the topic was favorite bookstores, I thought, “Oh, this is going to be a tough one.” For me it’s asking which cat is my favorite, or which See’s chocolate I would like. It’s pretty darn tough.

When I’d visited my dad on weekends during my childhood, we’d spend hours in bookstores. “Stay where I can see you,” he would tell me, and I did.  Dad, as I wrote about last year,  loved the hunt of finding books he could sell back somewhere else. He was the one who taught me how to spot a first edition, and to always act surprised if a book was worth more money than you thought it would be. “This copy of Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a first edition? I had no idea!” We could spend hours in stores— which please me, but drove my mother crazy when they were still together. “He can spend hours in a bookstore—I’m lucky if my eyes don’t go blurry after twenty minutes,” she once wrote my aunt.

There weren’t any bookstores in Pleasant Hill when I was a kid. There were a couple in Walnut Creek, and at the Sun Valley Mall there was a B. Dalton’s and a Waldenbooks.  It came down to this: If I needed a new Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, or anything else kid- or YA-related, I could go to B. Dalton’s at the mall. If I wanted something a bit more obscure, I would get it with my dad at an independent bookstore.

Then Bonanza Street Books opened.

It was a small bookstore, right near a shoe store and the Copper Skillet in Walnut Creek. Yet when I started going there when I was seventeen, I thought it was amazing that there were so many books stacked up everywhere. What amazed me even more was that, if you asked someone where a book was, they would know where to find it.

I went to Bonanza Street Books once a week. In my late teens, I felt like the Only Person In The World Today Who Reads. Which of course wasn’t true; my friends Meranda and Kim read, but I would look around my high school and wonder, why was I there? I mean, I knew “to finish school in order go to college, “ but why was I there when I felt I shouldn’t be there? Unlike other people, I didn’t have school spirit. I didn’t consider my senior year the best year of my life, which I heard over and over that year. I was at school thirty-five hours a week, and then I worked fifteen hours at the library. There were days I fell asleep on the couch as soon as I got home.  Sometimes I would wake up and wonder why am I working so hard?  Why am I reading so much, writing, working, what is this all for?

So I would just go to Bonanza Street Books when I needed a break, or I would see people chat about books, and I felt better, that this is where I belonged. Maybe I wasn’t a rah-rah girl at high school, but I belonged in a place where Gershwin would be playing while you looked at Anne Tyler novels. It was a good fit.

In 1991, the store moved next to the Festival movie theater. If this wasn’t a great combo, I don’t know what is. Now, before or after a movie, I could visit the store. The new location was bigger and now they could do readings. I saw Anne Lamott read there one November night with people in my writing group. We all had copies of Bird by Bird and we listened to everything she said about writing as if it were gospel.  There were a couple of women there who were very confused, though; why wasn’t this woman talking about advances?  Or about plot points? What about plot points?

Whether it was an out of print novel by James Wilcox, a poetry book by C.P. Cadavfy, there were times when I would be amazed at what I found there in the store. If I found enough to read for a while, I would go sit by a big window facing Main Street, where people would be walking to the movie theater or the Yacht Club, or to pick something up at the corner bookstore.

The store was owned by Jackie Miskel, who always said hi to me when I came in.  One time I accidentally bounced a check with them. I felt terrible: How was I going to go back in? I went in to explain, and when Jackie realized it was me, she said to stop worrying. “You’re family here,” she said. “We know it wasn’t on purpose.”

As I got older I didn’t go into the store once a week like I used to; I was working crazy hours at the library, and then I went back to school.  Jackie sold the store to someone else, and it wasn’t the same anymore. The books were still great, along with the store, but I didn’t need Bonanza Street Books so much anymore.  Mostly, when I needed a bookstore fix, I would go to Oakland and Berkeley, and I would only go to Bonanza Street when I was in Walnut Creek.  It didn’t help matters that the Festival went out of business and another movie theater opened very close to a Barnes and Noble.

Early in 2008 there came news that the store was shutting down. I was saddened but not surprised; Walnut Creek was becoming more la-di-da and businesses that were a staple in the downtown area the past fifteen years were now gone: Pinky’s Pizza, Dolphin Dreams, Simon’s Hardware, The Copper Skillet, Nora’s Coffee Nook,  and the Festival—all gone.

Last Monday, I was in Walnut Creek for an appointment, and I went by where Bonanza Street Books used to be. A dress shop is moving in the space soon. I stood there for a while looking through the windows. On the street, a truck advertising for Measure I, which would bring Neiman Marcus to Walnut Creek, went by. I stood there for a moment looking at the truck, wondering how it was there were times where I didn’t recognize the neighborhoods I used to know so well. I walked to BART, still knowing the way.