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.
Rosenberger says, furthermore, that business is swell at Dog Eared and at least one of the Phoenix locations.
This year of course saw the deaths of Borders, several Barnes & Nobles, A Different Light [Correction from earlier, Modern Times merely moved], and the owner of Adobe Books on 16th has been threatening to close for over a year now. And in total, S.F. has 12 fewer bookstores than it did in 2003. But maybe San Franciscans just really love their used books!
