CODY’S BOOKS SHUTS DOWN
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Michael Howerton | The Berkeley Daily Planet
Cody’s Books at Telegraph Avenue and Haste Street in its heyday
Courtesy Photo
Cody’s Books Closes After 52 Years in Berkeley
By Michael Howerton
Friday June 20, 2008
Cody’s Books, founded on Euclid Avenue in Berkeley in 1956, moved to Telegraph Avenue, expanded to Fourth Street in 1998 and San Francisco in 2005, closed on Telegraph in 2006, closed in San Francisco the following year, moved to Shattuck Avenue in March, and then, on June 19, 2008, went out of business.
Shoppers and passersby at the 2201 Shattuck store Friday found a locked store and a sign taped on the glass doors reading: “Cody’s Books is Closed-Thank You.” Above the windows a recently hung temporary banner proclaimed: “Now Open-Cody’s Books.”
An employee greeted a few people who knocked on the locked doors Friday afternoon, informing them that Cody’s was indeed closed for good.
Melissa Mytinger, Cody’s last manager, said that staff was told of the store’s closing during an all-staff meeting Friday morning. She had no forewarning of the move, she said.
“We were all shocked,” she said. “It was a great team.”
She said an official statement was expected to be issued from Japan, but as of Friday late afternoon, it was not available.
Cody’s Books, founded by Fred and Pat Cody 52 years ago, was for many years Berkeley’s most famous and most beloved book store in a town that loves books. The Codys were renowned for treating street people and protesters with kindness and generosity, especially during the time of the Free Speech Movement.
The business was sold to Andy Ross in 1977. He was responsible for the Fourth Street and San Francisco expansions and presided over closing the Telegraph store, after a business downturn that many observers thought was caused by problems with the expansion financing.
Soon after closing the Telegraph store in mid-2006, Ross sold Cody’s to Yohan, a Japanese book distributor whose owner-CEO was Hiroshi Kagawa. Yohan kept only the Fourth Street shop open. In December, Ross, who had stayed on as Cody’s president under the new owner, stepped down, and at the same time Kagawa left Yohan and took Cody’s with him to the IBC Publishing Group, the current owner.
From Japan, Kagawa issued this statement on Friday: “[It] is a heartbreaking moment; in the spring of 2005 when I learned about the financial crisis facing Cody’s, I was excited to save the store from bankruptcy. Unfortunately, my current business is not strong enough or rich enough to support Cody’s. Of course, the store has been suffering from low sales and the deficit exceeds our ability to service it.”
“When I met Cody’s 25 years ago, I was a freelance journalist, enraptured by its books and atmosphere. It means so much to me and I apologize to the people who have supported Cody’s for not being able to keep this landmark independent bookstore open. Cody’s is my treasure and more than that, Cody’s is a real friend of Berkeley community and will be missed.”
WRITER JOHN BENNETT’S CONDOLENCES
Saturday, June 21, 2008
CODY’S BOOKSTORE CLOSES
BERKELEY PLANET After 52 years, Cody’s Books will shut its doors
effective June 20. The Berkeley bookstore has been a beacon to
readers and writers throughout the nation and across the world.
Founded by Fred and Pat Cody in 1956, Cody’s has been a Berkeley
institution and a pioneer in the book business, helping to establish
such innovations as quality paperbacks and in-store author readings.
Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Cody’s was a landmark of the Free
Speech movement and was a home away from home for innumerable
authors, poets and readers. . .
ANDY ROSS, 2006, ON LEAVING TELEGRAPH AVENUE I was 30 years old. I
believed at that time that Cody’s was the greatest bookstore in the
United States, although I couldn’t exactly tell you why. I loved the
wide range of literary paperbacks. I loved being on Telegraph Avenue,
which was the heart and soul of the 60s counterculture and radical
political currents. I loved the smell. I loved the informality and
the democratic spirit of Cody’s. This was no carriage trade
bookstore. Our customers were a band of brothers involved in the
world of ideas.. . .
Over the years we built on that tradition. The inventory grew from
35,000 to 150,000 titles. We brought in writers and poets on a daily
basis. The great writers of the world visited us and read here. We
even hosted presidents. . .
The media have properly focused on Cody’s great historic moment
during the Rushdie Affair, when Cody’s continued to sell The Satanic
Verses after being bombed, even as the chains had pulled it from
their shelves nationwide. I think the importance of this story is to
acknowledge the true heroism of Cody’s workers who agreed to risk
their lives in support of the principle of freedom of speech. . .
In the early 1980s it was becoming clear to me that we were entering
into a period in which retail values were changing, that diversity
and greatness of mind were being subordinated to mass marketing
concerns. Increasingly independent bookstores, which thrived on
uniqueness and quirkiness, found themselves at risk. Increasingly
customers were becoming seduced by the allure of chain booksellers
and, later, the Internet.
Cody’s resisted these trends, although, as business people, we had to
make compromises to stay in business. In the 90s the world was
becoming an information society and retailing came increasingly under
the spell of the mass . . .
Cody’s was offering something that was a little deeper, a little
slower, and increasingly less valued. . .
Today in our Internet-based culture, can we say that we are wiser or
even smarter? Does the Internet teach us the meaning of life? We have
instantaneous information, but is it better information? Is it
information with a cultural context? With all the emphasis on
computers in schools, are our children better educated? Do they
understand the world better? Are they better equipped to cope with
the future? Are they better citizens? Do they have a stronger sense
of virtue?
Information can be retrieved faster, but do any of us have more time?
Do we have time to savor a great work, such as War and Peace? Do we
have time to push ourselves through something as complex as Thomas
Mann’s Magic Mountain? Do we have time to consider the timeless
truths of Aeschylus’ Oresteia?
We also know that American consumers have come to value uniformity
and predictability over diversity. The transformation of communities
and market places into formulaic Potemkin villages has ruined the
cultural landscape of cities. The marketplace has been the center of
community life since the time of the Greek Agora. It is being
systematically undermined by chain stores and Internet commerce,
which feed on communities without offering a vibrant communal life.
It is so sad to see that cities throughout the country are losing
their unique sense of place, that American cities are becoming one
large Walnut Creek, filled with the predictable Bed & Bath, Barnes &
Nobles, and the ubiquitous, soulless, main street-crushing
Walmarts. . . At Cody’s we resisted these trends. But in spite of
this, we found that increasingly we were selling more media-driven
best sellers and less of our wonderful wide ranging back list.
POET JACK FOLEY’S OP-ED LETTER OF SYMPATHY
23 June 2008
Dear John,
My wife Adelle and I, with F.D. Reeve, gave the last poetry reading at Cody’s–a shell of its former self and newly located on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. That’s the store which closed. They couldn’t stock my most recent book because Cody’s owed money to the distributor that carried it.
The article you say everyone should read from beginning to end certainly takes the cultural high ground, but unfortunately, Andy Ross never mentions the bad business sense that led him to close the Telegraph Avenue store–which was the heart and soul of “Cody’s”–and relocate first in Berkeley (4th Street) and then again in downtown San Francisco, where there was considerable competition from other, long-established book stores. Everyone I knew thought it was crazy to buy that San Francisco store. I’m sure Ross had his reasons–but, as it turned out, it was crazy. It seems that Cody’s was ruined less by the fact “the world was becoming an information society and retailing came increasingly under the spell of the mass” than it was by bad business practice. Do you know about Moe’s in Berkeley (located, as Cody’s was, on Telegraph Avenue) or Walden Pond Books in Oakland? They are, like Cody’s, long-established generalist book stores with a highly diverse stock and they have managed to survive the “information society” crisis. Part of the reason for this is no doubt the fact that they have stayed in the locations where they have done business for many years.
For me, Ross’s article reads less like cultural analysis than like a series of evasive self-justifications.
Sincerely,
