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MODERN_TIMES
March 25, 2014
The "Modern Times" bookstore of San April 2, 2014
Francisco's Mission district.
This is a place that used to be in a large
location on Valencia Street in the low 20s,
and has since relocated further east to a Adobe books has had to
smaller location on 24th Street. do a similar shuffle
from 16th to 24th,
running from Inner
The name of the place has always Mission gentrification
seemed fairly clever to me:
the "City Lights" bookstore of
North Beach is famous, but it's
main focus is somewhat backward
looking. Every single publication
of the Beat Industry can be found
there...
"Modern Times" continues the Charlie
Chaplin motif, but suggests a place There was also once
focused on present-day concerns, and a theatrical bookstore
indeed "Modern Times" has always been called "Limelight".
my "go to" location for left-wing
political publications...
The Bay Area has some
cachet as home base for
Charlie Chaplain:
NILES
Modern Times has been in financial trouble of late:
http://www.sfbayguardian.com/2014/01/07/modern-tragedy
http://www.sfbayguardian.com/print/2014/01/07/modern-tragedy
If you're a free-market believer,
you shrug at the news of a bookstore MARKET_BLIND
in financial trouble. If they can't
pay the rent, it's time to close the
doors and left a more profitable
business take-over, right? And who needs
brick-and-mortar
when we have Amazon?
The bookstore as an institution does
indeed have trouble in a world where
printed books are less popular, but if
people don't want to see the bookstores
close, then one solution is to move This is indeed the
toward a non-profit model, where way that the Modern
selling books is a sideline used to Times collective
reduce expenses, but is not relied on has been running
to be the sole source of funding. Then the place-- operating
they can continue to exist as informal at a loss is okay
community centers and so on-- but for if they can raise
that to happen people have to recognize enough by donations
that they want it to happen, that the to keep going.
sole function of the place wasn't
actually just to sell stuff. It's somewhat
distressing that
No one objects if a library doesn't as of January of
support itself by rental fees. this year, they were
still trying to
pay off the back rent
on their old location.
This reminds me of
the situation with
Cellspace, but with
even less logic to
it-- if they were
going to close the
old location anyway,
they probably
should've declared
bankruptcy, dissolved
the non-profit, and
While we're on this subject, allow formed a new one to
me to interject what appears to be manage the new space.
an unmentionable phrase: "commercial
rent control".
Someone takes a chance, gets a
small business running well even
though operating on a shoe string,
then the landlord comes by with
palm outstretched, threatening to
jack the rent.
I've heard this story too
many times... MIKEY_TOM
Another example:
There's a documentary
about Shopsin's formerly
of the West Village:
"I Like Killing Flies".
Rent control is clearly an institution that people
like because it slows things down a little, it
puts a brake on the rapid changes that markets
appear to be prone to (bubbles and collapses).
Rent control isn't a perfect institution, but its
one that exists, and does something like what people
want it to... extending it to commercial rentals
would clearly help out cases like "Modern Times".
MONOCULTURE
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