Opinion
Stacey's: Another tale with an unhappy ending
By: Ken Garcia
Examiner Staff Writer
01/07/09 3:03 PM PST
The announcement this week that Stacey's Bookstore was closing in March has to rank among the saddest chapters in the stories of San Francisco's vanishing cultural landmarks.Stacey's has been an icon on Market Street almost as long as the streetcars and to read of its demise is almost like watching the wrecking ball take down the illuminous Fox Theater way back when.
That another independent bookstore is going out of business is not news. The fact that this one happened to be Stacey's is.
The store opened in the majestic Flood Building in 1923 as a specialty publications retailer offering medical books. Its array of technical books made it rare in the industry, and even today, long after expanding into a general interest bookstore, it still had among the largest selections of manuals on computing, engineering and science.
It seems somewhat ironic that technology - an area in which is once specialized - helped run Stacey's out of business. One mouse click is all that most people now need to find an answer to any question - though it is a lot less personable than going to the information desk at 851 Market.
The advent of megachain bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders and discount retailers like Wal-Mart have been killing off independents like Stacey's for years. But after 85 years, Stacey's seemed to be as comfortable as an old book.
Yet the current economic crisis is making sure that even the best-loved retailers are not going to be experiencing a fairy-tale ending.
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