Where Aaben on California is small, dark, and claustrophobic, Acorn, around the corner on Polk, is airy and brightly lit. In Aaben, every customer is privy to every conversation at the front desk or anywhere else, while in Acorn, in spite of the brightness, there is complete privacy within the stacks. Conversations — even those close by — always seem faint and far away. The people behind the front desk are always busy at something, tapping into the computerized inventory, going through books, completing transactions… In Aaben, the only music possible would have to come from the radio behind the front counter. In Acorn, there is always interesting music being piped in over the sound system — classical, or folk, never top forty.

Last summer I applied for a part-time job there and was given what amounted to a written IQ test which included questions about my favorite authors and the last ten books I had read for pleasure. Apparently I did well, because the owner called me in for an interview. He is a tall, handsome, serious looking man with a gray beard, an ex-radical. He reminisced once about time spent in a jail after a demonstration.

Unfortunately, for the part-time job he had to ask for a commitment of twenty hours a week. I could not afford that at what he was offering in an hourly salary, so I politely declined.

Acorn, too, is gone. It’s now a gym. I miss it terribly, have missed it for years. To this day, when I’m walking down California towards Polk, something inside me tugs me in the direction of that lost, wonderful bookstore.