This literary spirit is pretty fun in corporeal form. Haunted Burrow BooksĀ has made a spooky story-filled home on 15th Ave E.
A recent power outage helped set the appropriate mood in the bustling commercial district on the top of Capitol Hill. Inside Haunted Burrow, a reading group gathered, divining with tarot cards “in the back of the store by electronic candlelight.” Continue reading
CHS has been giving love to Capitol Hill’s Twice Sold Tales for years. We celebrated its 35th year of serving Capitol Hill book lovers here a few years back.
Owner Jamie Lutton and her Harvard Ave shop got some more love earlier this month with some attention from a social media tastemaker. Derek Guy — the @dieworkwear fella who has gained a wide following puncturing the tasteless shells of some of the worst people on the planet by sartorial examination — called out Lutton and Twice Sold in a recent post. Continue reading
Attendees at Nook & Cranny’s final book club on Capitol Hill (Image: Nook & Cranny)
Capitol Hill has lost a bookstore. Nook & Cranny has packed up its bibliotherapeutic shelves and is nearly ready to open in its new home in a new development in the University Heights neighborhood.
CHS reported here in January as ownerĀ Maren ComendantĀ announced the 15th Ave E book shop had lost its lease and was on the hunt for a new location with the help of a community fundraising campaign.
Comendant created Nook & Cranny in the summer of 2022.Ā What if you read about a Capitol Hill bookstore for sale ā and bought it? Comendant can tell you. She purchased the business after reading about its previous iteration going up for sale on CHS.
Costs eventually outstripped profit on 15th Ave E and the bookseller’s search took her to Northeast Seattle. Nook & Cranny wound down with its final Capitol Hill book club taking place as March faded — “a lively discussion about Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn.”
With the 15th Ave E shop now dark and empty and awaiting whatever business joins the neighborhood next, Comendant says Nook & Cranny could be open any day in its new spot with plans for an official grand opening on April 26th’s Independent Bookstore Day.
Nook & Cranny will open soon at 5637 University Way NE. Learn more at nookandcrannybooks.com.
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Donald Glover
Horizon was giving away its remaining stock for free last weekend on 10th Ave (Image: CHS Facebook Group)
Let’s close this current chapter of neighborhood classics saying goodbye. Another of the longest running businesses on Capitol Hill closed quietly last weekend. It wasn’t a restaurant, cafe, or bar.
Horizon Books was proudly established on Capitol Hill 53 years ago making it contemporaneous with fellow class of 1971 business licensees Country Doctor Community Health Clinic, architect Roger Newell, and Vogue Coiffure Beauty Salon on our list of the oldest businesses in the area a few years back.
The bookseller that made its name on Capitol Hill long before Elliott Bay Book Company was transplanted to 10th ve quietly turned the page and liquidated its stock last weekend, handing out free books to anybody who stopped by its underground 10th Ave space home to “the largest and finest used books collections in Seattle.” Continue reading
(Image: Seattle Womenās Chorus)
12th Ave is home to the city newest little free library as the Seattle Womenās Chorus headquarters has become a center of celebrating free expression with a banned book drive and Saturday’s performances of a Banned & Beloved concert at First Hill’s Town Hall:
Banning books is a nationwide issue. In just the first half of the 2022-23 school year, there were 1,477 instances of individual books banned, an increase of 28 percent from the second half of the prior school year, the vast majority of which are written by or about LGBTQIA+ individuals and people of color and centered on race, sexual orientation and gender, according to PEN America. Continue reading
(Image: Seattle Bike Blog)
By Cormac Wolf ā CHS Reporting Intern
Tom Fucoloro has been behind the handlebars in Seattle for over 13 years. In that time heās grown Seattle Bike Blog from a small side project to a pillar of the cityās thriving biking community, even netting a book deal in the process.
He moved to Seattle around 2009 after selling his car to fund his trip and biking full time. Faced with the problems of the cityās bike infrastructure he started looking for anyone who was documenting the experience of Seattle bikers.
āI kind of started looking around for someone else who was writing about bikes. And there wasn’t really anyone who was fully committed to the beat,ā he says. āThereās an excellent bike blog down in Portland. And I thought, hey, I could do that in Seattleā
You can find Fucoloro Monday, August 28, at Capitol Hill’s Elliott Bay Book Company to celebrate the bookās release. Heāll be signing books — and likely fielding questions about our future I5-less Seattle
Bikes have been in Seattle longer than cars have, Fucoloro says, but he places the inception of the modern biking community at the first Bicycle Sunday on Lake Washington Boulevard in 1968. Continue reading
(Image: Elliott Bay Book Company)
Hall, Taylor, and Burgess
By Kali Herbst Minino
Today, staff at Elliott Bay Book Company will lift piles of books up and down the wooden stairs and replenish tall bookshelves for customers to wander through. Tracy Taylor, general manager turned co-owner of the store, continues to work alongside her floor staff as the group of booksellers restock the colorful merchandise celebrating Elliott Bayās 50th anniversary. Having worked at the store for more than 30 years before purchasing it alongside Murf Hall and Joey Burgess last year, Taylor has been there through the majority of the bookstoreās half-century of history that started in Pioneer Square — and now is an even bigger part of its future on Capitol Hill.
The first time she submitted an application to Elliott Bay, she wasnāt hired.
āThe person at that time didnāt hire me because they didnāt think Iād stick around long enough,ā Taylor said. āI laugh about that now and say āIām here just to show them that I could stay long enough.āā
Taylor moved to Seattle at the beginning of 1990 after getting a teaching certificate and working at an independent bookstore chain in Denver, the Tattered Cover. She moved to Seattle to pursue teaching, but her love for bookselling changed her plans.
A couple of days later, Elliott Bay gave her a call because the other applicant hadnāt worked out. Learning as much about the bookselling business as possible, she was mentored by the original founder of the bookstore, Walter Carr. Taylor eventually became a co-manager, and when Carr sold the business in 1999, she was offered a position as general manager. Continue reading
By Jadenne Radoc Cabahug, CHS reporting intern
Shops Close Too Early is Josh Feitās new book of poetry inspired by urban jungles around the world, including Seattleās Capitol Hill neighborhood — and a manifesto to better public transportation and affordable housing in Seattle.
Former editor of The Stranger and and co-founder of Seattleās news site PubliCola, Feit published what he calls a ātransit-oriented poetryā book. Feit uses his two decades of experience as a Seattle city hall reporter covering city planning, housing and transportation policy as inspiration for his poems.
āI realized as I was writing about it, I just wanted to say more and more iIn ways that went beyond news stories, and that just felt more magical and a little philosophical,ā Feit said.
Originally from the suburbs of Washington D.C., Feit says Capitol Hill is one of more urban parts of Seattle, since he feels the city as a whole is largely suburban in comparison to other cities around the world. Continue reading
(Image: Nook and Cranny Books)
A chef hoping to someday mix her worlds of food and books is starting with the book end of things on Capitol Hill.
“I joke that it was, ‘I guess Iāll just go buy this book store,'” Maren Comendant tells CHS.
It kind of was.
Comendant is the proud new owner of Nook and Cranny Books, a tiny shop along 15th Ave E. CHS reported on the decision in March by Kari Ferguson to find a new owner to take over Oh Hello Again after just over a year of business at the little bookstore where she introduced the idea of retail bibliotherapy to Seattle with a shop organized by topics ā āmental health, everyday problems, bettering yourself, relationships, travel, and many more.ā
Comendant bought the business including Ferguson’s stock and set about shaping her own shop. She has stuck with the the bibliotherapeutic organization saying she and Ferguson share āa very similar literary aesthetic.” Continue reading
A sign of normalcy — and a sign of the times — Little Oddfellows, one of Linda Derschang’s remaining Capitol Hill joints, is making tentative plans to reopen Friday inside 10th Ave’s Elliott Bay Book Company.
Even one of the city’s longest running food and drink entrepreneurs is being challenged by the pandemic’s ongoing impact on the labor force. Derschang says Friday’s opening is pending last minute hiring including an assistant manager and a line cook.
While the cafe has remained dark, the Elliott Bay store has continued to serve customers through the pandemic and is now a union shop. Retail on 10th Ave has also gone through some changes. Macklemore’s golf fashion play Bogey Boys stopped through for a temporary stay before teeing off again in University Village. New era furniture retailer Joybird is lined up to take over the former Everyday Music space across 10th Ave. Last summer, Glossier restarted its global beauty retail ambitions with a new store on the street. Continue reading
