Here's something you don't read every day: A new bookstore opens today on 24th Street (near Humphrey Slocombe at Treat) called Alley Cat Books, from the same owner of Dog Eared Books on Valencia and two Phoenix Bookstores in Noe Valley. (Uptown Almanac caught the movement in the former Wizard Smoke Shop last month, but today is the official opening.) Proprietress Kate Rosenberger insists to Mission Local that she is not crazy. "My romance is with the used book," she says, "the stories they come with, the inscriptions, the ephemera … the smells." Well, that's nice. more ›

The owner of Borderlands Cafe and Borderland Books in the Mission is apparently not pleased about San Francisco's smoking laws. Here's what he has to say in the above sign: more ›

Sad news for book lovers in San Francisco. According to reports, independently-owned A Different Light (489 Castro) in the Castro and Modern Times (888 Valencia) in the Mission will close their doors this year. Why? Because no one patronizes bookstores these days, that's why. Which is too bad since bookstores, you know, kinda smell nice and are (were?) great places for meeting people. more ›

Patricia Cody, who with her husband Fred co-founded Cody's Books in Berkeley in 1956, died Thursday at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland. She was 87. more ›

The Adobe bookshop (3166 16th Street), that beloved, cozy, second-hand shop on 16th Street with a backroom gallery, is facing some hard times. They have an alarming sign up in the window for a sale last week, and we had to inquire within what the story was. Must everything, in fact, go? more ›

is a series of fictional explorations of the afterlife that range from downloading one's consciousness to a computer to meeting God (both male and female versions). Fans of Radio Lab on NPR may have heard him as well as a couple pieces from the book on their recent episode about the afterlife (listen to the podcast here). more ›