Amid the blues bars and rescue missions of Pioneer Square, Seattle's storied intersection of sports and booze, art and vagrancy, the Elliott Bay Book Co. has stood as a symbol of comfortable, old-world erudition.
For years, it has been one of the West's few destination bookstores, a place tourists and locals alike visit for the sake of spending a couple of hours getting lost in its 140,000-some neatly stacked titles. When the last actual book downloads onto Kindle (at Amazon.com on the other side of town), Elliott Bay, one feels sure, will still be selling its musty, hard-bound predecessors, perused with a tangy cup of espresso in the basement cafe.
So it is with no small degree of anguish that Seattle has reacted to the news that Elliott Bay is facing the likely choice of either moving across town or closing altogether when its lease is up Jan. 31.
In some ways it is the familiar story of an independent bookstore getting hammered by book chains, online retailers and big-store discounters. But there are peculiar Seattle wrinkles.
The city's two downtown sports stadiums are bringing crowds of often-tipsy revelers through Pioneer Square, scaring the tourists and competing with locals for the ever-dwindling supply of parking.
And during last year's holiday season, any shoppers who might have been willing to jack up their credit cards during the recession stayed home anyway when an unusually heavy snowstorm paralyzed the hilly downtown streets for days.
"It's been a precarious existence the last four or five years," said owner Peter Aaron, adding that the store was put in the position "where we just did not have the wherewithal to ride out any significant problems that came along, let alone the perfect storm that hit us last year."
Aaron, a former retailer at Bullock's in West Los Angeles, has appealed to 11 banks for loans to keep operating.
So far, the only light he sees is the prospect of moving out of downtown, possibly to Capitol Hill -- a funky, alternative neighborhood on the other side of the freeway near Seattle Central Community College and Seattle University. (As it turns out, another well-known independent bookstore in Capitol Hill is closing.)
Unlike Pioneer Square, whose full-time residents seem to be primarily those who sleep on the streets, Capitol Hill has lovely old residential neighborhoods and a thriving student population.
