Green Apple, a venerable San Francisco establishment, is celebrating its 50th anniversary. This is no humble accolade in our rapidly gentrifying foggy city, a place where dozens of independent shops have yielded to luxury items and not even a Barnes & Nobles can take root.
Green Apple was the first place in San Francisco where I truly felt welcome. Though I live in Potrero Hill, I visit it at least once a week. It’s the right amount of disheveled to feel lived in, brimming with books and knickknacks in every available nook—a salvo for the throng of impersonal company spaces and big-box stores that plague SOMA and Union Square. I trundle across different levels of flooring, savoring the creaking of the store’s old bones, to poke around local cookbook zines, high-gloss photo books and the current fascinations of the store’s buyer.
It’s the right amount of disheveled to feel lived in, brimming with books and knickknacks in every available nook—a salvo for the throng of impersonal company spaces and big-box stores that plague SOMA and Union Square.
Green Apple’s charming staying power is made more powerful by the inability to quantify it. Kevin Ryan, one of the store’s three current co-owners, says the space “allows for serendipity” and empowers someone to just “wander the aisles and find something.” This is Green Apple’s greatest strength. It is equal parts archive and equal parts playground. The Granny Smith reading room requires some sleuthing — I didn’t discover it until my third visit. Kids’ school desks are placed away from foot traffic, in places where it would be feasible to grab a book and hunker down. It was at that desk that I quickly devoured Chloe Caldwell’s wonderful novella Women. After the narrative haunted me for a week, I purchased it upon my next visit.
That the store has been in the same location for 50 years has allowed it to grow organically. As Kevin explains, “Things that got stapled to the walls in 1972 are still there.” Newer additions get added to the collection in an expansion of personality and on account of the ushering in of new authors. “It’s in the architecture of the space,” Kevin adds. “If you took the books and moved elsewhere, people wouldn’t like it as much.” A gnome greets passersby with the life-size epigraph “Think before you speak, read before you think” alongside carts of used books. The next time you take the stairs from the children’s section to the second floor, say hello to the large cutout of Harry Potter directing you up the stairs. That addition was Kevin’s idea.
The “shelf-talkers” —reviews of specific books handwritten on note cards — are inexorable to the store’s atmosphere. Green Apple’s founder, Richard Savoy, claims that these were originally his idea. Whether that is accurate remains unseen, but these note cards have led me to a non-insignificant number of impulse purchases that have now become mainstays. Among them are George Monbiot’s Feral, Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove and a complete used set of A Song of Fire and Ice. I once inquired about adding a review, but it’s a privilege reserved for employees. And given Green Apple’s popularity, it’s a prudent decision.
If you’re in the neighborhood, I’d also recommend getting a meal from Burma Superstar (or its sister restaurant, B Star), checking out the pretty things at Park Life and then getting dessert at Toy Boat. This “sleepy Old Richmond” bookstore is open until 10:30 p.m., and apparently, Kevin has to kick people out every evening at closing time. He tells me with excitement, “I constantly hear kids begging their parents to take them into the store. Parents are too cool for that show of emotion. But kids have a really naked enthusiasm.” He also adds a brief anecdote about the time he obtained Robin Williams’s phone number. The story is best told in person.
So, Green Apple, thank you for remaining a place where books can be discovered and enjoyed, not just purchased. For 50 years, you have been part of the independent-bookselling landscape that has made it possible.
Green Apple is celebrating its 50th Anniversary on September 6 at 8:00 p.m. at The Great American Music Hall. Tickets are $25.
