Green Apple Treasure

All major cities have legendary bookstores; the ones that immediately come to mind are Powell's, Shakespeare & Co., St. Mark's Bookshop, Rizzoli's, Galignani's...the list goes on. In San Francisco, the most famous is probably City Lights Bookstore, but equally venerable (and probably more frequented by locals) is Green Apple Books on Clement Street. Clement Street is the high road of the Inner-Richmond district, and is a mish-mash of Russian bakeries, Chinese apothecaries, Irish pubs, and scholarly coffee houses. Nestled right at Clement and 6th Avenue is the busy, bursting, crowded-yet-organized mess that is Green Apple Books.

 My childhood was filled with walks down Clement Street, and my sister and I would always look for the little green elf that guards the front door of Green Apple. As we got older, we found that there was much more to Green Apple than a little green man. Dealers in used books, including rare first editions, the staff of Green Apple knows its books. They also know their shop - it may look like a mess, but they know exactly where everything is at any given time. This is amazing to me, because sections of the store get rotated and moved almost every six-to-eight months. Books are stacked everywhere. The downstairs is full of new books, so it's far better-organized than the upstairs, which features dusty tomes piled from floor to ceiling and under foot. At first glance you may wonder how anyone could inventory such a store, and at second glance you wonder how the fire marshall allows it to stay open at all. Yet Green Apple remains open as a San Francisco institution.

Every six months or so I gather my "pile" of books - things I've read, recycled, read a second time maybe, and discarded to a stack in the corner of my bedroom - and take them to Green Apple to see what I can get. Today, I brought over a whole bunch of books across all categories: new releases, biographies, non-fiction, cookbooks, etc., and for my 12 - 15 books I was given $45.00 in used book trade. Not bad, not bad at all. So I know that those books originally cost more than $45.00 all together whenever I bought them, but I can't even remember when that was, so I like to look at it as $45.00 that I found in my coat pocket. Grasping my little trade certificate, I made my way upstairs.

New Books!Green Apple has an extensive selection of used and out-of-print art books, photography books, and fashion books. The fashion section is the place I like to go because fashion books go out-of-print pretty darn quickly. It's hit-or-miss, but sometimes you can get lucky. Today was a lucky day.  I found two of the Assouline Memoires series: Gruau, and The Little Black Dress. I've had the Gruau one in my Amazon cart for months, but here it was marked down to only $11.00. The Little Black Dress was marked down to $12.00. They had more than a few of this Assouline series, but these two were the ones that compelled me most, so I kept them tightly in my arms. A few shelves down, I found Dessous - Taschen's little book of vintage underwear compiled by Giles Neret, which a friend of mine has, and which I've always coveted. Only $6.00? Done deal.

As I made my way back to the cashier, I remembered that I wanted Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise, so I grabbed a new version from the best sellers section and went to pay. When I got to the front, the cashier says "I have a used version of the Nemirovsky book, do you want that?" Of course - that would save me about ten dollars on the overage and everything. So, my $45.00 trade certificate garnered Ms. Wilson three fashion books, and a best seller, and I only had to pay $1.66 out-of-pocket for tax!

Four books for $1.66? I *heart* Green Apple. 

Top Image by K. Hunsanger