Net Results: On a visit out to the San Francisco area last week, I was surprised to be told that Kepler's bookstore had closed suddenly on September 1st. Kepler's is on El Camino in the city of Menlo Park.
El Camino is a road that still runs more or less the length of California, and is the "Royal Highway" created by 18th century Spanish missionaries, along which the 21 Californian missions are strung.
Kepler's too has an interesting, if less lengthy, history. Founded in 1955, it was set up as an alternative bookstore - even for California! - and attracted the 1950s beatnik crowd, then many of the counterculture writers and artists of the 1960s. By the 1990s, it was a source of techie and tech culture books for Silicon Valley's digerati.
I'd go to Kepler's for the technology books, as they had an excellent selection of items on technology and culture, technology and politics, technology and society, and just plain old technology. A huge table would hold all the newest titles and was the only place I knew of to go to get an overview of what was being published, discussed, heralded, disputed. I rarely left without exercising my credit cards.
Kepler's and I go way back. It was the first bookstore I remember visiting as a child. By 1989, it had moved into its big modern store, still on El Camino. But when I was young it was much smaller, packed to the rafters with books, and filled with the sound of anything from classical music to the latest rock'n'roll.
You could buy tickets for concerts at the famous Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, and there were taped-up notices at the counter for poetry readings by people like Allen Ginsberg, and for political rallies and marches.
Somewhat controversially, they also stocked psychedelic and rather off-colour 1960s and early 1970s posters. Because of the nature of part of this impromptu art gallery, some of my friends were barred by their parents from going to Kepler's, which was far more shocking to me than any of those posters.
My liberal Californian parents would never have entertained the notion of banning me from a bookstore, regardless of the type of book sold there. Indeed, they never edited my reading either.
Only once was a parental eyebrow raised regarding my reading matter - when my 11-year-old classmates passed around a copy of Love Story, which had lots of swear words and some sex. It was my turn to harbour the well-thumbed hardback, and unlike my friends, I didn't hide it.
My mother looked at the book, then looked at me, and asked if I didn't think I was a little young to be reading the bestseller. I said "no" and the subject was not raised again.
In general, anything involving letters on a page was viewed by my folks as having the redeeming qualities of being either entertaining or educational and, in any case, required the brain cells to exercise themselves at least nominally. For that enlightened attitude, I have been grateful to my parents all my life.
If I had to name the most important influence on my reading as I grew out of childhood into adolescence it would have to be Kepler's, browsing the books on the display tables, and buying some of my first "grown-up" books - serious and thoughtful and intellectually challenging.
The grown-up atmosphere was an indoctrination into a new world of active adulthood rather than passive childhood. The whole place shouted "think and learn for yourself" and surprised you that there was a universe of writing, thinking, political action and music out there, more than could be absorbed in a lifetime, so you'd better get cracking and start devouring what you could in the precious time ahead.
Apparently, an awful lot of Silicon Valley's technology movers and shakers feel the same way about Kepler's. Last week, it was announced that several of the Valley's tech stars had stepped in to help formulate a new business plan for the family company and Clark Kepler, son of founder Roy Kepler, announced the store should reopen in October.
Three Valley figures are now on an executive board for the bookstore: Daniel Mendez, co-founder and chief technology officer for Visto, a wireless technology firm; Geoff Ralston, chief product officer at Yahoo; and Bruce Dunlevie, general partner at well-known venture capital firm Benchmark Capital. In addition, 17 Silicon Valley investors formed a Kepler's patron's circle and have pledged over $500,000 (€416,000) to relaunch it.
Clark Kepler says the bookstore has had a hard time since the dotcom crash when many tech workers and customers left the region. Rent, estimated at about $30,000 monthly, has been crippling. Of course, it has to deal with competition from chains like Borders and online sites like Amazon. The rescue plan is focusing on expanding Kepler.com and promoting the shop locally.
I hope it works. With luck, I'll ring up some more Kepler's bills before too long.
weblog: http://weblog.techno-culture.com
