Enough With The Food Trucks, Now We Need A Book Truck
It was little more than a year ago that Granada Hillsians were moaning that the food truck revolution had passed us by. Seems like a long time ago now, doesn't it?
Free-marketers will recognize that the food truck revolution eventually migrated and parked itself in Granada Hills because there was a need here. Granada Hills has one or two decent restaurants, but man cannot live on A&W BBQ Seafood alone.
Now there's an even more desperate need in the marketplace: a decent bookstore.
With the sad, sad closing of Borders, the pleasures of browsing and discovering have taken another giant leap into the oblivion hole. Granada Hills now lies in the dead center of a smoking crater of booklessness. Once the Northridge Borders closes, there will be no bookstores within a ten-mile radius of this town. Read that again: ten mile radius.
Seeing the indoor playground Gummi the Bear, at the former Devonshire and Balboa site of The Bookhouse, still makes me vibrate with rage. Now, the only "bookstore" Granada Hills has is Joseph's Bikes And Books, which, despite a friendly staff, boasts an impressive selection of neither.
Two years ago, I used to fantasize that L.A.'s food trucks would make their way up to Granada Hills on occasion. That market hole has long since been filled. My new fantasy is that someone will stock a catering truck full of paperbacks and park that on Chatsworth Street.
related articles: onward-christian-cylists
Free-marketers will recognize that the food truck revolution eventually migrated and parked itself in Granada Hills because there was a need here. Granada Hills has one or two decent restaurants, but man cannot live on A&W BBQ Seafood alone.
Now there's an even more desperate need in the marketplace: a decent bookstore.
With the sad, sad closing of Borders, the pleasures of browsing and discovering have taken another giant leap into the oblivion hole. Granada Hills now lies in the dead center of a smoking crater of booklessness. Once the Northridge Borders closes, there will be no bookstores within a ten-mile radius of this town. Read that again: ten mile radius.
Seeing the indoor playground Gummi the Bear, at the former Devonshire and Balboa site of The Bookhouse, still makes me vibrate with rage. Now, the only "bookstore" Granada Hills has is Joseph's Bikes And Books, which, despite a friendly staff, boasts an impressive selection of neither.
Two years ago, I used to fantasize that L.A.'s food trucks would make their way up to Granada Hills on occasion. That market hole has long since been filled. My new fantasy is that someone will stock a catering truck full of paperbacks and park that on Chatsworth Street.
related articles: onward-christian-cylists
Well, as sad as it is, with my ipad there is a bookstore available 24 hours a day
ReplyDeleteSo not the same...
ReplyDeleteLikewise my Kindle and Android...
ReplyDeleteSo true. I still remember going to the bookstore as a kid and my dad letting me pick one book he would buy for me to read. Good memories.
ReplyDeleteThese days my book shopping is mostly done in airports, one of the few places still selling books!!
Actually, there is an excellent bookstore, with a wide range of both general interest and specialized works, about a mile from the intersection of Chatsworth and Zelzah:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.csun.edu/universitycorporation/bookstore.html
If you want more restaurants or bookstores or anything else, then stop complaining and start recruiting. When you see an available space, call or email your favorite restaurant or retailer and ask them to consider a location in Granada Hills. I can't be the only one who's done this -- am I?
ReplyDeleteThe CSUN bookstore is good, although the hours are somewhat limited when school is not in session. The Borders in our area was allways busy. I'm sure if a new bookselling outfit sets up shop in GH or Northridge they'll do very well for themselves (provided their second floor is not filled with DVD's and CD's.)
ReplyDeleteNot so! I can think of two, offhand:
ReplyDeleteContinental Comics, right here in GH (Devonshire between Balboa and Amestoy)
Books 5150, in Chatsworth (Mason & Devonshire, next to the Tuesday Morning)
I've been to Books 5150 and was not impressed They are too cluttered and didn't seem to be organized as best as I've seen other used bookstores.
ReplyDeleteTo see a booklover's dream I'd recommend the drive to visit Ilyad Books,5400 Cahuenga Blvd.,
North Hollywood, CA, 91601
It a warehouse of a booklover's dream.
And I can promise if they took over The Borders at Northridge Mall, they'll do very well for themselves and their second floor WON'T be filled with DVD's or CD's.