Long Live The Pineapple Chunks!

Remember New-Age bookstores? Remember when there were so many bookstores around that they could actually specialize? Carroll and Barbara, the owners of Volumes of Pleasure, where I work in Los Osos, used to own a bookstore in Laguna Beach. They called it A Different Drummer. The store specialized in Women’s and Gay and Lesbian issues. VOP has a spiritual leaning but we carry everything from romance, crosswords, mystery and vampires books side by side with Ram Dass and Pema Chodron. You can't afford to specialize too much anymore.

Years ago I worked in a family owned custom framing shop next door to a Metaphysical bookstore in a small center in downtown Malibu. I managed the framing shop, Deborah (who is still one of my closest friends) managed the bookstore. I have fond memories of she and I standing in front of our shops when things were slow talking about nothing and everything. She would tell me about her latest conversation with (because it was Malibu) Shirley McClain about her most recent new-age book and I would share my latest conversation with (because it was Malibu) Miles Davis about…well whatever Miles wanted to talk about. The shopping center was warm and friendly and all independently owned stores. We all knew each other and supported each other. By the time I moved away from Malibu it was already changing. The independents were disappearing and the chains were flowing in. Which in Malibu (because it was Malibu) were high-end chains.  

I have been reading lately that Malibu is fighting back against this onslaught. And (because it is Malibu) they have Dick Van Dyke as their spokesperson. Cool! Every town has the right to and should fight to protect their rural or small town to quirky or country or hip or whatever feel that the people who live there know makes it special.

In my novel Connie and Monique’s Power Trip, Connie, who owns a struggling independent bookstore in San Francisco, expresses an understandably jaded view of the American retail world, “…a big bowl of fruit salad with identical bite size pieces of apples, bananas and grapes, Walmarts, Starbucks, and Home Depots, floating around in a great white mass of ordinariness. A few chunks of pineapple manage to add the illusion of exotic flavor but they are quickly disappearing.”

Long live the pineapple chunks!