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E Pine exodus continues as quirky Spine & Crown calls it quits

8443891273_022399ca95It’s probably not a giant surprise. The businesses along the stretch of E Pine between Bellevue and Melrose will either need to fold or move on. There are big changes coming. Edie’s has already settled on a classic Capitol Hill two-block move. Kris Minta’s one-of-a-kind indie bookstore Spine & Crown? There will be no move. Of course, Minta is ending things with a fantastic and weird essay about running a small business, books and what he’s off to next:

As many of you already know, come the end of July, Spine and Crown will be calling it quits. This is sad news in many respects. I don’t think there’s another shop in Seattle that fills our precise niche, so that’s some kind of loss. I DO sift through a lot of crap so you won’t have to… but there will soon be an app that chooses books 78.93% as well as I do, so there’s that to look forward to.
Snark aside, I feel privileged to have promoted pretty much what I alone thought was good for nearly 8 years – and to have found enough customers to support (very modestly) my doing so. Most people don’t do what they do because they want to – they do it for money. I have been lucky enough to earn a living that rare other way, and I owe thanks to everyone who made it possible. My poor memory (and my desire to remain concise) won’t allow a list, but I would like to single out the Wall of Sound crew (Michael Ohlenroth and Jeffery Taylor) for extra thanks. If they hadn’t taken me in a couple of years ago, I would have been writing this in 2011. The last two years have been more fun than the previous six combined.

Why not soldier on? Our building is being torn down. That’s part of it. Not much money was another part. Hard to save for the kid’s college fund if you’re only breaking even every month. Kindle? Sure. College kids downloading books as PDFs? Yep, it’s starting to make a dent.

Mostly, it just seemed like time for a change (and maybe a little bit like the universe was pushing me out the door). So I applied to MFA programs all last fall and was admitted to Syracuse – a storied and honored program (with great funding, to boot). Soon, I’ll be teaching and writing full-time, not selling the writings of others. I’m pretty good with that.

A small shop, though, when it’s run right, will build a little community. It would not be going too far to call it a family. I will certainly miss the family I leave behind. I’m astonished at the ebb and flow of it, how some people join and stick and how others leave, sometimes to come back, sometimes not. A key strategy in business today is to figure out how to force these kinds of organic processes to happen – in essence, to fake sincerity. I never tried to force anything… I was always happy to just be astonished.

This approach to business is probably why I haven’t been much of a financial success. Luckily, my replacements – the property developers (with their 50 year max-lifespan plywood crapboxes), the Subway sandwich shop owners (with their tried-and-true meat to lettuce ratio), and the inevitable Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks – will not suffer from my impediments. We will all be safe in the hands of their market strategists, who, I am assured, have our best interests at heart.

With regard to the shop, what happens next? Well, if you have trade credit or a gift certificate, you should use it soon. Anyone with books on consignment is welcome to retrieve them at any point and settle accounts.

Also, I still have some events planned. The most important one is a fundraiser for my move across the country. There will be a magician, poetry, accordion interludes, a live band, a sword-swallower, and a fire-breathing dragon. Still in negotiations with the dragon and sword-swallower, who knows, could all fall through, don’t count your chickens, etc., etc. The fundraiser should happen mid-June. Maybe the 14th, maybe the 21st. I’ll keep you posted.

Until then, buy some damn books! If you dig what we’ve got, our selection has never been better. There WILL be an inevitable fire-sale for all the vultures, but don’t count on the discounts going too deep – we’re still going to sell online – and Powell’s offers a hell of a deal for trade credit – so most leftover stock will be going out thataway.

I never intended to run a shop for everyone. There’s enough retail in the world trying pathetically to be everything to everyone. I wanted a little treasure box that would delight those prepared to be delighted. I didn’t know if you’d find it, but you did.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

For more on Minta, here’s our conversation with him in early 2010 about Elliott Bay Book Company and other topics retail. We also posted about him later that year as he scrambled to keep his independent book business alive. It worked. And now he’s moving on.

Kris Minta on the Economics of Having a Bookstore from David Albright on Vimeo.

We’ll see what we can find out about what’s next for Wall of Sound.

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10 Comments
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Beth
Beth
10 years ago

What a great letter. Seattle’s loss is Syracuse’s gain.

areyouurbanexperienced
areyouurbanexperienced
10 years ago
Reply to  Beth

perfectly put, Beth. Ditto.

NinaV
NinaV
10 years ago
Reply to  Beth

Absolutely!

Dod
Dod
10 years ago

You’ve been a great neighbor. I’m sad to see this whole block go. It is one of the primary reasons why I moved to Capitol Hill. The human scale storefronts. The small, locally-owned businesses. The merchandise sold. It’s tough to watch them disappear along this part of the Hill, but I’m glad to hear that such good things are on the horizon for you. Thank you and best of luck in your new endeavors!

bgix
bgix
10 years ago
Reply to  Dod

The Developers have the power, and the Hill is slowly but surely be transformed from that slightly gritty neighborhood we all wanted to live, into shiny-new-expensive and unfortunately soulless.

The Hill will eventually become “affordable” again, when the cool and quirky has all been replaced by high rises and parking garages.

But hey! At least there will be a ton of half empty a-pod-ments…. Who wants cool and quirky when the bottom has dropped out of the single-room-with-a-shared-kitchen rental market?

Eric
Eric
10 years ago

I am not sure how Wall of Sound stayed in business never see many people leaving with purchases.

dod
dod
10 years ago
Reply to  Eric

If you’ve ever shopped there more than likely you’d find that you weren’t shopping alone. At least that’s been my experience.

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[…] we are about to lose yet another independent bookstore and used books, too, will be in shorter supply come summer, here are two community-oriented efforts […]

Wes
Wes
10 years ago

Capitol Hill has always had chains. You all act like the banks and chains are something new. Yes there are more of them now, but there’s just more retail in general. I actually like a lot if the new independent ly owned businesses. They’re a lot cleaner and the people working in them actually seem to understand the concept of hygiene. Don’t get me wrong a lot of the old places had great food. However, many people in seattle seem to believe old and dank are synonymous with character. I disagree old and dank can have character but so can new and shiny. My only gripe with the new developments is that some of the retail spaces are too large, but even this is beginning to shift.

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[…] Kris Minta’s essay detailing his decision to close the Spine & Crown bookstore is also a remarkable meditation on the realities of small retail on Capitol Hill. In the meantime, Mud Bay has also left while Edie’s is making a two-block move to E […]