Nancy’s Blog

Barnes & Noble on Shattuck has closed.

Berkeley which used to be a town full of bookstores, with Cody’s as the flagship, has fewer and fewer.

I keep expecting  to see Black Oaks to close — when I’m there it’s always mostly empty, very different from just a few years ago.  This is a tragedy — buying books online is OK, but it’s very different from being able to look at and handle books, and find ones I wouldn’t have known to order online.  And the fewer books I can find locally, the more I order online: with Cody’s Telegraph closed, there’s no place around, including Cody’s 4th Street, with that selection.  And with Cody’s gone B&N was more important, as a large bookstore with a variety of books.

Black Oak Books is for sale– from SF Chronicle:

But with profit margins down, a five-year lease coming due and a partner who wants to retire, Pretari, 49, may have to seek a vocation less perfectly suited to a Berkeley-educated polymath.

Last week, he sent up a trial balloon, inviting someone, anyone, to buy one or both Black Oaks stores — the Berkeley location on Shattuck Avenue or the San Francisco store on Irving Street. (A short-lived third store in North Beach closed last year.)

“We’d like Black Oak to keep going,” he says, adjusting his round glasses and settling into a chair in the back office, a warren of books. “We’re exploring every possibility, even if that means someone else has to come in and own it.”

I had them try (and fail — twice) to make a pair of sunglasses from my optometrist’s prescription. They made two mistakes. One was not quite matching my prescription, the other (and more serious) was based on a measurement of their own — clearly, to me, they blew the initial measurement and, instead of redoing the measurement and remedying the problem, they argued that there is no problem — despite the fact that the glasses don’t match my regular glasses and simply don’t work! Sloppy work, and no willingness to admit to and remedy their mistakes. Avoid them. Pass the word.

ADDENDUM: A Google Local search on them turned up a majority of very negative reviews, one of which says they have Better Business Bureau complaints against them. Well, now they have one more; I filed one today.

UPDATE 12/30/06: It’s been a while, but I saw that this posting got a hit because someone was searching for this business. They never answered the BBB complaint, which resulted in the BBB finding against them. And my credit card company credited my account.

Email from my city council member:

The Solano Stroll
Sunday, September 10.
The parade down Solano Ave. begins at 11:00 am, with the street festivities to follow.
The theme this year is “Send in the Clowns <http://www.solanoave.org/strol.htm>” - no doubt many of your local elected officials and/or current candidates will be there, including yours truly. …

Regards,

Laurie Capitelli
Berkeley City Council, District 5
510-981-7150