[Photo Credit: Katy Raddatz, SF Chronicle]
A Berkeley institution closes today, and hundreds of people showed up for cake and balloons at the wake: Cody's Books on Telegraph Avenue has shut down, a victim of the street's dramatic decline. The owners also blame the internet, online book sales and the lack of intellectual curiousity of "today's students." Well, yes, if you have a problem with the smell of stale urine and hostile street kids, ordering online does make a lot of sense.
Cody's also faces the aging of it's customer base. Berkeley's old lefties are getting older; they die or move away. They're replaced by younger residents who furnish the old brown-shingle houses with leather sofas from Crate & Barrel, and are far more comfortable hanging out in Borders. In the words of one father of four we know in Berkeley, "Telegraph Avenue is just too scary for them." Cody's still has two other locations, one in San Francisco and one at Fourth Street in Berkeley.
· A conclusion for Cody's [SFGate]
· What About The Books? [CurbedSF]