[HN Gopher] Gone 10 years, World's Biggest Bookstore still grips...
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Gone 10 years, World's Biggest Bookstore still grips readers
Author : daveoc64
Score : 81 points
Date : 2024-05-28 12:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thestar.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thestar.com)
| guyzero wrote:
| Going to The WBB in the 80's was a great experience. So many
| books to browse, it felt like they had every magazine and
| periodical in existence. But it did get a lot worse by the
| 2000's, turning into what Indigo has become selling gifts and
| other things. But definitely a high point of the pre-2000 retail
| experience like the huge record stores on Yonge St that are now
| all gone. Also, in a Toronto Gen X retail deep cut, Mr Gameways
| Ark was just up the street and was a mecca for 80's Toronto D&D
| players.
| VancouverMan wrote:
| Just this morning, a colleague of mine in Toronto forwarded me
| a link to a very recent video showing the current state of
| Yonge in that area:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0onFRIQrGQ
|
| That video starts just slightly north of where this bookstore
| and the stores you mentioned were, and goes up past Bloor.
|
| It is sad to see how sterile, and how deserted (in terms of
| people and businesses), that area has since become, especially
| as somebody who had experienced it decades ago.
| xattt wrote:
| I can still smell the place!
| divbzero wrote:
| Sounds like the WBB was to Toronto what Powell's is to Portland.
| Are there other bookstores like this around the world? Let's hope
| some of them can survive and thrive.
| ghaff wrote:
| Probably the Strand in NY qualifies. Although it's probably
| mostly small niche indies (and some a bit bigger) that are the
| most interesting other than the big outliers.
| mihaic wrote:
| I live in Romania, and Strand is one of the places I revisit
| absolutely every single time I'm in NY.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Powell's original location in Portland is nothing short of
| amazing. Its a multi story bookstore that is well organized and
| easy to browse, its really quite an experience for any who may
| describe themselves as a 'book lover' or 'book connoisseur'.
|
| Its really an enjoyable experience.
| darknavi wrote:
| Powell's is a must-stop when ever we drive through Portland.
| Such a fun place to explore and nab a few books.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| The dearly departed technical bookstore was only equalled by
| Berkeley
| throwup238 wrote:
| The top floor also has a rare books room that is a joy to
| browse. Last time I went there was only two items they
| wouldn't let me take out and peruse: the Lewis and Clark
| journals worth half a million that they kept off site and a
| 600 year old Italian manuscript.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Powells is amazing! We love taking the kids there, browsing,
| picking up some new books, and all four of us reading in the
| cafe.
| mturmon wrote:
| the Last Bookstore in LA: https://www.lastbookstorela.com
| oldmanhorton wrote:
| Strong disagree. So much space dedicated to touristy pictures
| that could be used for books instead. Very poorly laid out
| and hard to get around all of the people taking selfies, and
| even once you do I found their book selection to be
| lackluster (at least for historical non-fiction)
| solomonb wrote:
| I agree, it really doesn't have very many books.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Baltimore used to have a really cool Barnes and Noble in a
| former power plant building. Place closed back in 2020.
| garciansmith wrote:
| John K. King Used & Rare Books in Detroit. Four stories of used
| books housed in an old glove factory (plus an adjacent building
| with their rare stuff, art annex, and storage, though that's by
| appointment only). Definitely worth a visit! (Full disclosure:
| I worked there for many years.)
|
| https://www.johnkingbooksdetroit.com/browse
| CalChris wrote:
| Powell's is pretty cool. San Francisco has Green Apple and
| Berkeley has Moe's.
|
| OpAmp in LA was awesome, sadly in the past tense.
| mc32 wrote:
| Green apple over on Clement is a fire hazard. The other one
| is small.
| kd5bjo wrote:
| There's the Tattered Cover in Denver, but it's apparently in
| the middle of bankruptcy right now-- might not last much
| longer.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattered_Cover
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| No!! I love Tattered Cover, I have been going out of my way
| to purchase books there ever since I moved to the Denver
| area. I'm super bummed to find out they are struggling that
| much. Hopefully they are able to keep the dream alive!
| solomonb wrote:
| Moe's Books in Berkeley.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Are there other bookstores like this around the world? Let's
| hope some of them can survive and thrive._
|
| I've come to deduce that the death of bookstores is nothing
| more than a trope pushed by tech fetishists.
|
| Last Thursday evening, I sat in the cafe of a chain bookstore
| in a major American city while my wife was browsing, and
| counted the people. There were close to 70 in my field of view,
| and in the 40ish minutes I sat there, over 100 people came in.
| The line at the checkout never had fewer than five people in
| it, and often more than a dozen.
|
| A couple of weeks ago, I drove past my local bookstore (also a
| big chain) before it opened, and there was dozens and dozens of
| people waiting in line to get in.
|
| Books aren't dead. Reading isn't dead. Acknowledging that there
| are people who enjoy different things than you do is dead.
| garciansmith wrote:
| I don't think it's just techies who believe that (although
| plenty do, for sure!). Lots of regular non-techie people
| think only old people care about books, for instance. When I
| worked at a used bookstore (left just before COVID), family
| members would make comments like that and seemed surprised
| when I told them we had tons of people in their teens and 20s
| coming in and buying books (used and old ones at that!).
|
| It is true that the bookstore business has faced a lot of
| downturns: indie bookstores were really hurt by the big chain
| stores, Barnes & Nobles and Borders in the '90s, then Amazon
| and online shopping hurt them all some more. But the indie
| scene is stronger than it was, say, 15 years ago. A lot more
| smaller and niche shops have been opening up (at least in US
| cities I'm familiar with).
| glitcher wrote:
| It's probably a mistake to arrive at a conclusion in either
| direction based solely on anecdotal evidence. Unless the
| conclusion is specifically just for one localized area being
| observed, as opposed to extending those conclusions to all
| bookstores everywhere.
| briffle wrote:
| according to this article, Powells is larger than the one in
| the article by many thousand SQ feet, but maybe they were
| measuring it by..
|
| Oh:
|
| Opened in 1980 in the former Olympia Bowling Alley building,
| the World's Biggest Bookstore may not, in fact, have been the
| world's biggest bookstore. It was a marketing gambit by Jack
| Cole, who owned Coles and SmithBooks, and thought "a massive
| bookstore would do well for Toronto," as his son David told the
| National Post in 2014. He paid a reported $2.4 million for the
| property
| FireBeyond wrote:
| It's also arguable that Powell's is bigger. They mention 68,000
| sq ft, while this one in Toronto was 64,000.
| vidarh wrote:
| Waterstones in Picadilly in London is in a 90,000 sq ft
| building, but I'm not sure if all of it is used for the book
| store (abd even within the book store I guess it depends if
| you count onky public spaces, and if you include thr cafes
| etc.. They claim 200k titles.
| tkgally wrote:
| The Kanda-Jimbocho area of Tokyo has over a hundred bookstores
| within a few blocks [1].
|
| Aside from a break for a few years during the pandemic, I've
| been buying books there for four decades. The neighborhood has
| evolved over time, and some large stores that stocked only new
| books have closed. But the market for used and antiquarian
| books must still be strong, as many of the old stores are still
| in business and quite a few new ones have opened in recent
| years.
|
| Most of the books are in Japanese, and the neighborhood,
| despite being centrally located, doesn't attract many foreign
| tourists.
|
| [1] https://en.jimbou.info/
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _Opened in 1980 in the former Olympia Bowling Alley building,
| the World's Biggest Bookstore may not, in fact, have been the
| world's biggest bookstore._
|
| It might have been at some point, but by the time it closed I
| think Powell's was bigger.
| bdowling wrote:
| This reminds me of the Computer Literacy Bookshops in Silicon
| Valley.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Literacy_Bookshops
| starkparker wrote:
| Powell's in Portland also did this for a moment.
|
| Some point in the early-2010s they rented a retail space across
| from the main store and moved their engineering and computer-
| related books into a technical annex, and topped all the
| shelves with vintage equipment and old computers.
|
| It got folded back into the main store around 2014, and the
| selection is still good, but I really liked it having its own
| cozy, dedicated space.
| galago wrote:
| Before that there was Powell's Techinical Bookstore on the
| North park blocks. That store had a cat named Fup that was
| really old. Every year, they would print birthday stickers
| for the cat and give them away. I still have one that I use
| as a bookstore from when the cat turned 18.
| bitwize wrote:
| It made the front page of Reddit when Fup the cat died at
| the age of 19. In those days, Reddit was for Hackernews
| types and not... what it is now.
| lelandfe wrote:
| You'll enjoy this thread on Reddit from last year: https://
| www.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/13ft7q0/who_else_...
|
| Awesome to see soo many remembering that cat. Also,
|
| > _I was a programmer for Powell 's for 22 years. One thing
| I programmed into the lookup stations at the main store was
| a search for fup got you a picture of him._
| cylinder714 wrote:
| Yes! I got my copy of SICP there.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I did too as well as Programming Pearls.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| Powell's technical books was amazing!
|
| Sadly there's very few technical book stores left in the US.
| The only two I can think of are:
|
| - Ada books in Seattle, WA
|
| - MIT Press bookstore in Cambridge, MA
|
| Are there any others that still exit?
| cylinder714 wrote:
| I used to make the pilgrimage from Santa Cruz to the store on
| N. First Street, and occasionally the store on the old Apple
| campus.
|
| And Stacy's Books in Cupertino and Market Street in San
| Francisco, and the last holdout, Digital Guru off the Lawrence
| Expressway.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _This reminds me of the Computer Literacy Bookshops_ [...]
|
| Toronto used to have Toronto Computer Books up until the
| mid-2000s (on Yonge, a few blocks up the street from the WBB of
| this article):
|
| *
| https://www.profilecanada.com/companydetail.cfm?company=2524...
|
| Bought a bunch of Perl stuff as well as the Sendmail 'bat book'
| there, back in the day.
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| Alas with the rise of the Internet and e-commerce, bookstores
| have been on a slow but firm downward trend.
| dangus wrote:
| This is factually incorrect, independent bookstores are
| increasing in number.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/independent-bookstores-membership...
| samatman wrote:
| This reply is factually irrelevant, a minor bounce back from
| pandemic closures is unrelated to the fact that the spread of
| e-commerce lead to massive closures of bookstores a couple
| decades ago. They have by no means recovered to anything
| resembling their pre-Amazon numbers.
| dangus wrote:
| Growth since 2009
|
| Page 8 (PDF)
|
| https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/20-068_c19963e7
| -...
|
| Please note that I never claimed they had "Amazon numbers."
| I never claimed that they were as prevalent as they were
| pre-e-commerce. I'm merely stating that a "slow but firm
| downward trend" is not correct.
| bee_rider wrote:
| > They have by no means recovered to anything resembling
| their pre-Amazon numbers.
|
| > Please note that I never claimed they had "Amazon
| numbers." I never claimed that they were as prevalent as
| they were pre-e-commerce.
|
| You seem to be arguing different points here (despite the
| quotes). They are talking about the bookstores returning
| to their own pre-Amazon numbers.
| dangus wrote:
| No, the person I originally replied to described the
| alleged "slow and firm downward trend" of bookstores
| since e-commerce came around.
|
| However, after an initial decline due to competition from
| e-commerce, independent bookstores have been growing
| since 2009.
|
| The person who replied to me would have been correct if
| they were posting their comment in the mid-2000s, but
| their statement has not been true since 2009.
|
| I provided sources and data to back myself up and nobody
| arguing against my point has.
|
| I have not at any point changed the argument I am making
| nor have I moved any goal posts. The entirety of my
| argument is that in recent years independent booksellers
| have been on an upward trend. I never made any claim
| about their sales compared to Amazon. I never claimed
| that the industry never faced decline. I am merely fact
| checking the original statement that the industry is
| allegedly in a downward trend.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| I went when it was part of Indigo chain and I would say its
| aesthetics didn't match the 'book superstore' vibe of Chapters or
| its parent company, but just the volume of books made up for it.
|
| It had a great selection of SciFi books.
| roter wrote:
| I remember having more luck at Bakka Books back in the 80s when
| it was on Queen St. Looks like it still exists in perhaps a
| reduced form [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakka-Phoenix
| throw0101d wrote:
| https://www.bakkaphoenixbooks.com
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| Sweet, I should check it out next time I'm in the city.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Most people not from Toronto that have heard about WBB remember
| it from Short Circuit 2.
| https://youtu.be/AbkbU32X5dI?si=rDQmmGk75lm8ElPA
| ink_13 wrote:
| A shame the title has been mangled by HN's filters. The store's
| actual name was "The World's Biggest Bookstore".
| daveoc64 wrote:
| Yeah, it was way too long to fit it all in!
| throw0101d wrote:
| https://archive.is/cXThE
|
| https://archive.today/cXThE
| BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote:
| WBB was a favorite place to discover and explore topics.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Looking at the exterior photo, it's nice to see that they
| encourage hanging out there... so many businesses are trying to
| get rid of people these days.
| randcraw wrote:
| The original Border's in Ann Arbor was pretty great. It was my
| chief reason to visit town when in SE Michigan.
| trentnix wrote:
| The longtime YouTuber Happyconsolegamer (who is among the most
| genuine, excellent, consistent, and passionate of his kind and
| who I've been watching for something like 15! years) tells a
| great story about this amazing book store. Turns out his late dad
| managed the store a few decades back and the amazing stuff in the
| store was a big part of why HCG is so entrenched in retro
| nerdity. Enjoy:
|
| https://youtu.be/mTJlcBAPazQ?si=d-LZgCIJwUIrzulm
| Zod666 wrote:
| I used to go all the time, just walking in there gave me this
| good feeling. like many industries, the internet killed it.
| busterarm wrote:
| I always got diverted on my way there by Funland Arcade across
| from Sam's.
|
| All three are gone and it feels like a tragedy.
| lunatuna wrote:
| That was the perfect trinity for me. Not sure I see it as a
| tragedy, but I do hate the feeling of nostalgia and knowing I
| can never get back to that time and place. I was down there
| semi-regularly from my mid-teens to early twenties. Overall
| great time in my life and I think for Toronto at large. Even if
| they still existed I could never get back to that point in
| time.
| darepublic wrote:
| Fond memories of visiting this place as a kid. Parents used to
| bring us there maybe once or twice a year and it was a treat.
| astrodust wrote:
| Back before documentation became available online, the technical
| books section at this store was perhaps the largest repository of
| technical documentation available in town. The selection was in a
| part of the store bigger than most mall bookstores, entirely
| technical books on the tall shelves from top to bottom.
|
| I bought dozens of O'Reilly books from that location over the
| years.
| lunatuna wrote:
| I bought an early version of Redhat on CDs there along with my
| tech books. I was then able to get to my own mail and ftp
| server going. WBB might even get some credit for my career
| path.
| localhost wrote:
| I bought my shareware copy of DOOM from WBB, alongside many other
| books.
| murphyslab wrote:
| I remembering visiting WBB at 20 Edward St when I lived in the
| GTA during a co-op term. But the real treasures I found were
| usually in BMV Books next door at 10 Edward St. BMV offered
| incredible collection of vintage books and magazines. I recall
| the owner guaranteeing to me that he could find any book sold at
| WBB and get it to me cheaper. Glad to see that it's still
| standing.
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