Sometime last week I made what I’m sure will be the last trip I will ever make to Tower Books. The Tower location I always went to was the original location right across from the Tower theater on Broadway in Sacramento. I even remember going to Tower Drug, where Tower Records started, before it closed, though the record store was already opened. I have been going to Tower for my records, books, and video needs for all of my life, and now it is all going away.
I’m generally a pretty nostalgic kind of guy, and this actually makes me sad to see. Be glad that you live in other parts of the country and don’t have to wander among the nearly empty isles. All that is left now are the bottom of the barrel books. All the books around the edges are gone, and only the center rows still have books in them. The staff is still trying to be helpful, but I can’t help but think that they can’t really care anymore. I felt like too much of a circling vulture to actually buy anything that day. It is too late to help now anyway. They are gone, but we’ll always have the memories.
I know it’s just a store, but it always seemed like it was my store.
{ 3 } Comments
Change is sad. A lot of people in NYC do not know that Tower began in Sacramento, but they are grieving as the NY stores go through the same thing.
It seems unimaginably sad to wander the hollow shelves of Tower Books. I purposely bought most of the books I read in high school from that store, because it felt like the hippest and most erudite Tower Books around.
I’m thinking of taking a vow to never read a book again.
but will that really change your life? Subtext: no one thinks you read.
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