The Little Book Store That Could.

It isn't San Francisco's most famous bookstore like City Lights, where Allen Ginsberg's Howl was first performed. Or a destination for authors on book tours, like you will find at Books Inc. in the Civic Center. Yet San Francisco's Alexander Book Company, for me, was the little book store that could. When I read it was going to close sometime in April or May of 2023, I found myself pre-mourning this old friend.

Located in the not-so literary neighborhood called the Financial District, this little three-story gem, nestled between downtown skyscrapers, was one of those places to wonder into and find something interesting. I especially liked the travel and San Francisco sections of the store, as that's kind of my wheelhouse.

Because it was the only real bookstore for a mile in any direction, hotel concierge I knew in the area used to refer their guests there because that was the closest place to send visitors looking for local guide books on San Francisco and California. When I occasionally found myself between concierge jobs, and working conventions near by, I would often go there and just peruse the aisles.

And they remembered their customers. When I first started doing research on my book, the Alexander Book Company was the first place I engaged. I met Jerry, who is an author himself, and expressed interest when I shared with him that my book was about the life of a hotel concierge. He loved the idea and was very helpful with suggesting books of a similar subject matter for me to research.

Every few months or so I would order a book about publishing or hotels and when I went to pick it up, he'd remember me and asked how the book was progressing. I last saw him after I attended the San Francisco Writers Conference in February of 2023, and he again checked in to see how I was doing and my experience at the SFWC. He remembered who I was and what I was doing, after not seeing him for months. I mean who does that?

The Alexander Book Company

A couple of decades ago, when big box retail stores were decimating the mom-and-pop independent bookstores, I asked how they

survived all these machinations. The woman behind the desk said, "The Boarder's and Barnes & Nobles', drove many independent book stores out of business. Then the Amazons and Walmart's drove the Boarder's and Barnes & Nobles' out of business. The small book stores, who still managed to survive all of that, found there was no more brick-and-mortar local competition.

The Alexander Book Company then got by on a loyal local clientele, tourists funneled to them from the nearby hotel concierge desks, and particularly the tech workers who by then were dominant in the area. And so ironically, they weathered the onslaught of the big book chains, then Amazon, and so on. Yet it was Covid 19 which precipitated the hollowing out of local tech workers, and their exodus out of the city which drove the final nail into the Alexander Book Company's mortal coil.