FRIDAY FIVE

First of all, let me just say this: All independently-owned bookstores are winners. I love walking past them, I love going inside, I love navigating the shelves — touching books I’ve already read and remembered their hum or grazing books I’ve yet to meet. I love deciding to buy something; I love taking the new (still warm) books home and having truly no bookshelf space for them.

It’s a well-earned stereotype that Americans use “love” as a platitude, to describe things they simply favor. But I mean it when I say it: I love bookstores.

The entire Bay Area has a bright literary history and buzzing list of current authors (Just Google: Andrew Sean Greer, R. O. Kwon, Tommy Orange, Charlie Jane Anders, Meg Elison, Juli Delgado Lopez, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, to get started). But the region also holds some of the best independent book stores in the country.

For now, I’m focusing on five great San Francisco bookstores — explaining just exactly why they’re notable locations you need to visit.

The Booksmith

When I “graduated” from pre-school, Miss Lisa loved me so much and was so sad to see me go that she put me first in the ceremony — claiming that if she waited until the end, she’d be completely undone. This is why I’m listing the Booksmith first.

The Booksmith just moved from their location on Haight Street to… slightly further west on Haigh Street. The store shares a wall with the craft cocktail bar, Alembic, now and (once metering customers is no longer needed) hope to let customers flow blissfully between the two; drinking a cocktail, buying a book, rinsing and repeating until enlightenment is reached.

The Booksmith is known on the national level for its stellar programming. Old salties will wax poetic about how drunk and loud they got at a Shipwreck event or how many free incredible finds they got at a Bookswap. Introverts will (later, in writing) tell you all about the Silent Reading Parties.

Like all other ambitious cradles of culture, Covid-19 whipped all of the Booksmith’s events out or online. And, for now, they’ve got the new, gorgeous location to break in. But subscribe to their newsletter! Because when authors begin touring en mass this fall, they’ll be at Booksmith (after a few drinks at Alembic).

Until then, shop their “staff shelves”. Here, each staff member displays a mix of old favorites and what they are currently reading.

You’ll certainly vibe with one of their reading styles and want to return to stay up-to-date.

TBI tip: Afterwards, (assuming you already hit up Alembic) head to the storied and beloved Amoeba Music for a record or music merch.

booksmith.com, 1727 Haight Street (Haight-Ashbury)

2. Dog Eared Books

This bookstore power triple has three locations: Dog Eared Books Castro on Castro Street, Dog Eared Books Valencia on Valencia Street, and Alley Cat Books on 24th Street.

All three locations sell (and buy) used books as well as fresh copies. Used bookstores are vital for the heavy book buyers among us. They offer cheaper versions of that last Morrison book you need to finish your collection and some pride when you trade in the books you’ve already read for cash or store credit.

All three locations are top-tier bookstores, but we especially love Dog Eared Castro for its extensive LGBTQI+ sections. When you want to better understand a person or group of people’s experience — there’s no better tool than grabbing a book by and about them. (Following that, how can we-as-a-city be an epicenter for queer thought, expression, and compassion if we don’t have a hella gay bookstores slinging every LGBTQI+ title there is? We can’t. Or, at least, we shouldn’t try.)

If you need children’s books with LGBTQI+ characters, histories of lesbian artists, magazines by local queers, memoirs by trans people, or just a glossy magazine with hot gay guys — Dog Eared Castro will have the best selection in the city. (Which means they have one of the best selections in the nation, btw.)

TBI tip: Afterwards, go to Harvey’s for chicken tenders and martinis

dogearedbooks.com, 489 Castro Street (The Castro), and 900 Valencia Street (Mission District)

3. City Lights Booksellers & Publishers

Ok, a history lesson: This North Beach “literary landmark,” was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter D. Marti. It served as a publisher of independent literature at the forefront of the progressive-thought movement with such Beat generation besties like Jack Keroauc and William S. Burroughs. City Lights still publishes the occasional book and has released about 200 in its history. It’s major!

But just like how Dog Eared Books Castro is your destination for queer subjects and authors, City Lights is where you go for poetry. They have an entire poetry room on its own floor.

You can feel the poetry when you walk up there. Truly. It’s magical.

More people read prose than poetry so a book store with even the most well-read staff may not be able to help you find the perfect collection. But if there’s poetry you’ll like — it’ll be at City Lights.

And you get to stand in that historic room while you find the perfect one(s).

TBI tip: After stopping in, visit the Beat Museum around the corner.

www.citylights.com, 4519, 261 Columbus Avenue (North Beach)

4. Silver Sprocket

This is the only comic book store I’m including, but there are several fantastic ones in SF (Hi, Comix Experience and Mission: Comics and Art). But as the New York Times put it, “[Silver Sprocket is] a tiny San Francisco-based comics publisher that is also a bicycle club and an activist collective.”

So (like City Lights) Silver Sprocket is also a publisher of the genre they specialize in. There, you can get the graphic novel you’ve been hearing about but you can also find the indie graphic novel that no one is talking about yet. Being at Silver Sprocket is seeing the bleeding edge of comics and of illustration. I know not everyone “gets” comics and graphic novels yet. Likely, they were a very specific, entertaining, but one-note medium when you were a kid. But that’s no longer the case. Comics and graphic novels have seen more artistic growth in the last few decades than any other form of printed storytelling — and we’ll bet my entire collection on that.

TBI tip: After, go to Papalote for a chicken mole burrito

silversprocket.net/, 1038 Valencia Street (Mission District)

5. Omnivore Books

I’m just going to say it: Cookbooks are works of art.

They are coffee table books. They are masterclasses in photography, mood, and design. Loving to cook and loving cookbooks are two separate things and buying cookbooks requires so, so much less dishwashing.

Omnivore specializes in books about food — a massive category. Sure, they’ll have the trendiest cookbook in stock but they’ll also have lesser-known books with stellar recipes or collections of food and food-science writing. They’re also the only place I’ve found that has every issue of gorgeous, local food magazine Toothache.

As in all indie bookstores, the staff is knowledgeable, nice, and — yes — you can bring your dog in.

TBI tip: After, go to Chloe’s Cafe for banana walnut pancakes

omnivorebooks.myshopify.com/, 3885a Cesar Chavez Street (Noe Valley)