Indie bookstores get their own day

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, April 28, 2015

We all have our own Sept. 11 story. It was a day so shocking that the memories of where we were and what we did after the towers fell stay with us more poignantly and with more detail than most other days.

I remember Portland being a ghost town. Everything seemed closed down. There was little or no traffic. One place was open, though — Annie Bloom’s Books in Multnomah Village. When I walked in, at 8 or 9 o’clock that night, I told the person working behind the counter how surprised I was that they were still open.

“We wanted to be a sanctuary for people tonight,” he said.

That was what Annie Bloom’s was for me that night. I browsed through the bookshelves, enjoying how good and safe it felt to be in the presence of the written word. I bought a copy of “On Writing” by Stephen King and left feeling so much better than when I came in.

Portland is home to numerous independent bookstores. Of course, there is Powell’s City of Books. Others include Broadway Books, Wallace Books, In Other Words, Mother Foucault’s Bookshop, St. Johns Booksellers,and Green Bean Books.

On May 2, the city will pay homage to those independent bookstores with the inaugural Independent Bookstore Day. Annie Bloom’s (7834 S.W. Capitol Highway) will celebrate throughout the day with hourly drawings, scavenger hunts for kids and adults, and snacks and beverages.

“We want to champion independent bookstores and our customers who have kept us around a long time in Portland,” says Annie Bloom’s manager Will Peters. “We still have a thriving independent bookstore community. It’s as much a celebration and a thank you to our customers as anything.”

If you have never been to Annie Bloom’s, this Independent Bookstore Day event would be a perfect opportunity to check it out.

Growing up within walking distance of Annie Bloom’s, it has always been one of my favorite places in the city.

The bookstore opened in 1978. The name was a mashup of original and current owner Bobby Pichenor’s middle name, Annie, and the last name of Pichenor’s business partner at the time, Susan Bloom.

Annie Bloom’s is not enormous, but I have rarely walked in searching for a book I couldn’t find. It has a great selection of fiction, nonfiction, mysteries and a very complete children’s section. It is clean and well-lighted. Currently, there are 18 people who work at Annie Bloom’s, covering the 12 to 13 hours a day the store is open. Some people work just one shift a week.

The staff is very knowledgeable. When I was 17 years old, I reached the place that all readers eventually come to when they have no idea what they want to read. I asked a woman working there at the time for the best new book they had. She gave me a copy of “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger, which remains one of my favorite books of all time.

Perhaps the best thing about Annie Bloom’s is the cat.

Several cats have taken their turn being a mascot for the bookstore over the years. The current cat, named Molly Bloom, is an extraordinarily well-tempered feline that sits on the windowsill and alternates between looking at the people walking through Multnomah Village and the people browsing books.

“We’ve had a few cats over the years,” Peters says. “Molly Bloom is probably the most popular. She’s more important than any of us working here and more popular than us with the customers. A lot of people come in just to see her. She lives there full time. Part of people’s job is to make sure she’s taken care of. The staff really dotes on her a lot.”

The world of bookselling has changed dramatically over the past decade. Once, independent bookstores had to fight the likes of superstores like Borders. That fight looked like a shoving match in the schoolyard compared to the all-out war that both large and small bookstores now must fight with the Goliath that is Amazon.

Peters is stoic and confident about the fight, though.

“I’ve been in bookselling for over 30 years,” Peters says. “I’ve seen the ebb and flow of it. Now more stores are being opened than are closing. That’s good news. Competition always changes. We’ll see what happens in the future. There’s always going to be a new big competitor. We kind of adjust and adapt by listening to our customers’ needs and wants.”

I can be as guilty as anyone when it comes to buying books for my Kindle. But the thought of losing brick-and-mortar stores like Annie Bloom’s is as saddening as thinking about Bengal tigers becoming extinct.

Independent Bookstore Day is the perfect opportunity to celebrate how good it feels to walk into a bookstore. Hopefully, we never have to know a world without Bengal tigers and bookstores like Annie Bloom’s.