By Kimberly Kinchen

Bookkeeping is a new, occasional series touring some favorite places from Capitol Hill and the nearby via bookshelves, covers, and spines

Small bookshelves are tucked into establishments all over Capitol Hill. What’s on them, and why? In Bookkeeping, CHS asks small businesses on and around the Hill to open their books to us. For this inaugural post, we spoke to Brandon Waterman, co-owner, with Jason Marqusee, of Good Weather in Seattle, one of the Hill’s collection of bike shop-slash-cafes. You can find Good Weather’s book collection on their bookshelf just inside the front door of their Chophouse Row shop.

How does a book make it onto this shelf? Most of those books are mine. Some aren’t there — we have more in the back — because not all cycling books feel inclusive, so to speak. Bike shops have traditionally been male and fast, and that space is really negative. And some of the books were all about how to be a dedicated, perfect cyclist. And it’s like — “Maybe it’s not about that.”

The bookshelf doesn’t get used much now that we don’t have indoor seating. Which will come back soon, hopefully. But the way that books show up, each one has their own unique story. It’s a little bit like looking through your closet….I can look at every single garment that’s in my closet and know where it came from and have like a story behind it like, “Oh, I got that at Crossroads, I got that when I went on vacation to Japan.”….Some of them come from friends. Some of them come from collections that we’ve had for a long time. And then some of them just magically showed up. There’s a series of maps, because a lot of cycling is finding your way around. And while there’s really good resources for that online, there’s also a huge amount of printed and interesting material….A lot of those maps came from a guy who was touring in the Pacific Northwest, from here up into British Columbia. He had a bunch of maps sent here before he arrived from Europe. And when he came back through to fly out, he left them with us.

Some are just things that we found that we really love. Some are gifts. There’s this little book, A Cycling Lexicon, the whole thing is antique bicycle head badges. I was at a friend’s house. They had this book and I was enthralled by it. They ended up sending it to us.

Tell me about a favorite book on the shelf — that you haven’t already talked about: There’s a book that Rapha put out…This book in particular is beautifully illustrated and really interesting….We keep in touch with a lot of the other [bike] shops around town…And Rapha has their own little collection of books. This one is a very straightforward introduction to road cycling, and they do it in a really approachable way. And you’re kind of sensing a theme of — we like to try to be approachable. I think this is a little nugget that is just really straightforward. Some of it gets into a little drinking the Kool Aid of Rapha. But the majority is really lovely about explaining the basics, doing it with these fun little things. “This is why you wear bibs and why you wouldn’t!” [or] “We have a mantra: it’s ‘Always be snacking.’” when you’re out on a long ride….

What is a book that should be on the shelf but isn’t? Probably books that don’t have anything to do with cycling. The Boys in the Boat is a really neat book about the rowing team at the University of Washington, their background and stories…..it includes a lot of really weird, interesting details of sorts. Not everything has to be about cycling. The other one, which is going to make its way there now that I realize it’s not there, is a book that my partner found, I think it was, at Granny’s Attic [a thrift store] on Vashon Island. It’s a guide to Seattle from the late 80s or early 90s.* It’s written in a very raunchy way, but it tells you about bars and the streets and the places where you’d want to go….Whether you’re from here or not, it gives you this context of what the city used to be….If you are from here, some of the stuff still exists. It’s like, “And it was what then?!” Seeing that change over time is pretty awesome. It’s also a book that doesn’t require you to read, you can just open to a page, and it’ll have a review of a place.

Books in places like this aren’t trying to give somebody literature to sit down and read for a couple of afternoons. Instead, what’s interesting and gives somebody some context in which they can banter with the person next to them? That’s a lot of what we try to do, is make sure that people have a way to talk to other people. That’s why we do our group rides. That’s why we have the cafe attached to a bike shop. So books that do that same thing feel like they should line up in there, too….I have to find that book, it has such a good cover, it’s this bright yellow book.

*Brandon followed up to provide a cover photo of this book, which is Hedonist In Pursuit Of Pleasure And Happiness: An Unconventional Guide, self-published in 1970.

Have you read all of these? No. Definitely not. The main reason is that some, The 75 Rides of the Northwest [sic], for example, it’s not meant for you to read them. And some are picture books. Which, I guess I’ve read those.

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