Slog

If you're in the bookstore-buying business, Seattle is a boom town for you right now. I told you last month that Queen Anne Books is for sale. A recent Twitter post by QABooks suggests that things might be progressing in the right direction:

The phrase of the day is "serious negotiations." I can't say more.
10:39 AM - 12 Mar

But now I have word from Vanessa Ormiston, the owner of Balderdash Books in Greenwood, that if she doesn't find an owner for her business by May, Balderdash Books will close forever. I've always liked Balderdash Books, with its super-high shelves crammed full of cheap paperbacks. It's the kind of used bookstore that you visit because you want to spend time browsing, not because you're looking for a particular title.

If you're the entrepreneurial type, Balderdash's website is here. Frankly, I've always thought that Seattle needs a good sci-fi-only bookstore, like San Francisco's superb Borderlands Books. Stick a cafe in front with a big TV for group genre TV show-watching event nights and role playing game nights, stock a good selection of new and used genre titles, and make it the kind of place where geeks want to hang out and talk about their nerdly pleasures, and you've got a good shot at making it work. Balderdash Books would be a great location for that. Plus, it would make Greenwood, with 826 Seattle's Space Travel Supply Company, Seattle's preeminent sci-fi neighborhood. I would love to see the street gangs that kind of neighborhood would develop.