It's Not About the Bike

"I tried not to go to too many hills," said Julie Todd of A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books in San Francisco. On Saturday, July 12, which was a sunny, beautiful day in the Bay Area, Todd led an all-day literary bicycle tour of independent bookstores in San Francisco. The 16 cyclists met in the morning at A Clean Well-Lighted Place and cycled to 10 independents over the course of the day, pausing at each store to browse and buy books. At every stop, a bookseller would discuss a current favorite book and/or giving a brief history of their store.

Last year, Todd had co-organized with San Francisco Bicycle Coalition's Renee Rivera the very popular "Tales of the City" bicycle tour, where the group visited sites mentioned in Armistead Maupin's classic series. The event was so well attended, Todd and Rivera determined to do it again this year, but they wanted to add another literary tour. Todd decided on an independent bookstore tour, given the concentration of independent bookstores in San Francisco.

The tour started at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books with Todd discussing her favorite read -- Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture edited by Andrew Kimbrell (Island Press), a nonfiction book about sustainable versus industrial agriculture. While the group toured A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, one or two volunteers watched the bikes.

The tour visited City Lights Books, where Peter Maravelis discussed Lawrence Ferlinghetti's inspiration for founding City Lights and some of the lesser-known historical facts about the legendary bookstore (it had been a Pentecostal Church), which celebrated its 50th Anniversary last month (for a previous article on City Lights' 50th Anniversary, click here). Maravelis talked about his latest pick, which was The Beat Generation in San Francisco: A Literary Tour by Bill Morgan, published by City Lights.

At another stop, Ruth Mahaney of Modern Times Bookstore, a bookstore with a focus on politics, media, and criticism, regaled the crowd with how Modern Times got their initial left-wing start as a collectively owned bookstore. Mahaney also explained to the crowd how even the serious politicos ask for light reading occasionally, which was why they expanded their bookstore to include more fiction and other genres.

The tour finished up at Cover to Cover Booksellers, where owner Tracy Wynne talked about how the 25-year-old bookstore was saved from imminent closure by a customer, who rallied 40 members of the community to invest $5,000 each to save the store. (To read an article on how Cover to Cover was saved from closing, click here.)

Todd said the tour was a great edifier for everyone, including herself. She mentioned that Maravelis at City Lights was right on when he had said of San Francisco and its bookstores: "As much as you know or think you know, there's always something to learn."

Many of the cyclists were introduced to bookstores they'd never heard about before the tour. "Every time we stopped, I'd ask how many people had ever been to the store," said Todd. "Most had never been before. It was pretty great to introduce them. People never knew there were so many different independent bookstores."

The group ride was supposed to end at 3:00 p.m., but everyone lingered so long at the different stores, it lasted until 5:00 p.m. "It's hard to plan because you never know how long people would want to spend," said Todd. "Everyone was so happy, I didn't want to crack the whip and chase them out of a bookstore to keep to a schedule. It was really fun. It was extraordinary to see the city in a different way." -- Karen Schechner