Books Inc opened its Berkeley store at 1760 Fourth Street today. The doors opened early to welcome the crowd that had gathered outside eager to experience a new book store after witnessing so many go the other way in recent years.
Co-owner and president Michael Tucker told Carolyn Said at the Chronicle: “I’m a Berkeley boy, so for me it was absolutely anathema that there wasn’t a general-interest bookstore left here.” Said’s story also explores why an independent chain like Books Inc has managed to survive against the odds. Read it here.
o Books Inc coming to Fourth Street – August 6, 2009
Books, Retail, West Berkeley
Books Inc
How have I missed The Bone Room? I was looking at the latest post on one of the more delightful blogs I follow, Curious Expeditions, and lo and behold, it was enthusing about a store on Solano Avenue. Curious Expeditions describes it as “electrifying”. Here’s The Bone Room’s own description:
The Bone Room is a store in Berkeley specializing in natural history items. We’re the place to come to for real bones, genuine fossils, quality bone and fossil replicas, exotic insects, and all manner of weird and wonderful things. Visiting us is like a trip to a mini-museum. We are a source for teachers, artists, illustrators, collectors and imaginative gift buyers; it’s “the best store on earth,” according to an ardent twelve-year-old customer.
The store at 1569 Solano was founded by Ron Cauble, who also founded the East Bay Vivarium. The Bone Room is open 11 to 6, Tuesdays through Saturday.
Photo from Flickr by Curious Expeditions
Retail, Science
InBerkeley was out of milk — as per usual — so we went to check out Ashby Marketplace, which has just opened near the corner of Ashby and College in the Elmwood.
First impressions are good. It’s a very nicely designed space — airy, with good lighting and well displayed goods. The emphasis is on healthy, natural food and organic produce. There’s a significant dairy section, fresh produce and baked pastries from the Paris Baker. We leaped to a verdict: it’s Star Grocery meets Market Hall.
Owner Ramiz Hasan (pictured, bottom right) is happy with both comparisons, but says he sees himself as friend rather than competition to both these venerable institutions. This is his family’s 18th store — most are around Haight Ashbury in the city — but it’s the first one he has got to run and he is brimming with ambition for the new venture.
“I have been a Bay Area native for 28 years and I’ve always wanted to own my own store — and I knew I wanted it to be in Berkeley,” he says.
Hasan says he’s bringing in lots of locally produced goodies to his “100% green” shop, such as olive oils and cheeses. He also guarantees that his cheeses cost on average $3 per pound less than at any other independently run vendors in the area — even though he is using many of the same suppliers. “I want to bring my prices down as much as possible and be a real old-school store,” he says
He mentions his niche specialty last: ” I have the largest selection of natural and organic pet supplies among independent stores, possibly in the whole of California,” he says.
Knowing how berserk Berkeley is about dogs, that should make a lot of people very happy.
Business, Food, Green living, Retail, The Elmwood
Ashby Markeplace
Despite today’s fog and cold, the weather report for the next several days is hot, hot, hot. Cool off with this 2-for-1 special on iced drinks at your local Berkeley (or other) Peet’s.
Just download and print this coupon, bring it with you when you buy yourself an iced drink and get a second one of equal of lesser value free. I happen to like their mocha freddo. Good through Tuesday, September 22, only one coupon per visit and only at Peet’s retail locations.
(Photo: OakleyOriginals via Flickr.)
Food, Retail
Pop-up stores are in — but you knew that already — and a delightful one has just appeared in The Elmwood, taking the front space of the equally delightful Trips Out Travel store.
Designer Donna Allman has amassed a wonderful trove of decorative and useful items over the years and is doing a clear-out. There are delicate packets of Japanese silver leaf, for $10 if memory serves, beautiful buttons, odd rolls of pretty 1950s wallpaper and drawer pulls from $5 to $10.
Picture nails have been one of Allman’s specialties at her business Lilac Bow Yoke. A decorative button attached to a nail, they were used in Victorian times to hang paintings. Martha Stewart liked them so much she featured two of Allman’s designs in her catalog.
I liked the black and white ones with old-fashioned illustrations of kitchen utensils and clocks.
Allman is a friend of the owner of Trips Out, which by the way has been dispensing travel advice in the same spot for more than 40 years. She will be displaying her wares on Saturdays and Sundays from about noon to 5pm for the foreseeable future (an element of surprise being de rigueur with pop-up stores).
[Photo: www.elmwoodshop.com]
Retail, The Elmwood
Donna Allman, Pop-up store, The Elmwood, Trips Out Travel
Whole Foods has been making the news recently, and not in a way that its publicity department will be happy about.
Meanwhile, the upmarket grocery store continues to address criticism leveled a few years ago by Berkeley’s resident uber-foodie Michael Pollan (who, by the way, does not approve of the current Whole Foods boycott) with an advertising campaign that highlights its commitment to local suppliers.
Open the current issue of Edible East Bay and take a look at the inside front cover.
There you will find a map indicating where Whole Foods’ East Bay outposts — including Berkeley — source items such as dairy free ice cream (Maggie Mudd in San Francisco), baby chiogga beets (Marin Roots Farm) and sea kraut (Cultured in Berkeley).
It’s a nice map and, I think, a good marketing move. Click on the map to see it full size.
Food, Retail
Advertising, Food, Whole Foods
Photo by Kava Massih Architects
John King approves. Read why the Chronicle’s architecture critic likes how Kava Massih Architects approached the task of designing Berkeley Bowl West here.
Architecture, Retail, West Berkeley
Berkelely Bowl West
Chocolatier Blue, the Berkeley-based gourmet chocolate maker, is opening a second store on Fourth St. in the location formerly occupied by Sketch. A call to Chocolatier Blue confirmed they are planning to open the new shop in September, though an exact date was not available.
Owner Chris Blue was chocolatier for Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago before opening the first Chocolatier Blue at 1964 University Ave., and spent his childhood summers on a self-sustaining family farm in Nebraska, which is where he learned about organic agriculture and how important it is to support local farms. His hand-made confections use Amedei chocolate, which is considered by many to be the best chocolate in the world. Fresh organic cream is shipped directly from a Nebraska farm, raw butter is from the 5-Star Butter Co. in California, pistachios are from Sicily and raw produce is from local markets.
Business, Food, Retail, West Berkeley
The Seven Palms grocery store on Euclid was described by reader Matt as looking “blighted even while still open” in a recent post on developments on the 1800 block of the street. But there’s still something appealing about its retro signage.
Retail
The East Bay Express has just published its annual Best of the East Bay issue. There’s a lot of Berkeley content, as you might expect.
Some things I heartily agree with. Best bookstore for really smart people? Yes, it’s University Press Books. Best place to let kids bang things with a hammer? Definitely the Adventure Playground. Best thing to happen in Berkeley this millennium? Well, they might be right that it’s Berkeley Bowl West. (Editor’s note: What about InBerkeley?)
But some of the judgments had me scratching my head. Nabolom may be a storied counter-cultural institution, but it’s not remotely the best bakery.
Clearly, InBerkeley needs to delve into this “best of” business and produce its own list. Watch this space, and then let the brickbats fly.
Food, Retail, restaurants
I counted six empty retail spaces on the 1800 block of Euclid Avenue at Hearst, just next to the UC campus.
If a cakes and cookie shop can’t pull in a steady stream of students, what hope is there?
Update: According to reader Ryan Shaw, the reason these stores are vacant is that “the whole corner is being partially demolished and renovated”. See the city’s planning details for numbers 1854-78 here. Thanks for the tip Ryan.
Business, Property, Retail
I’m not sure how many florists the Elmwood can support, but Flower to the People opened today on the corner of College and Russell, in a long-unused kiosk. I hope Flower to the People and the long-established Blooming Alley can coexist happily. At 2pm today the founders of Flower to the People were still smiling, but they admitted that set-up had taken them so long that they had only sold two bunches of flowers so far.
Retail, The Elmwood
I have it on good authority that Alice Waters’ favorite holiday is Bastille Day and her favorite ice cream flavor is Mulberry (hence this yesterday).
Waters has also shared her favorite places to eat and shop in the Bay Area with Google, of all people, so they could produce a “Alice Waters’ Favorite Places Map”.
Many of her haunts, unsurprisingly, are in her home town. Here they are:
For the full map click here. (Note that the map is titled San Francisco and Berkeley but there are several Oakland locations included and one in El Cerrito.)
Food, Retail
Alice Waters, Food
How utterly disappointing. Just a couple of weeks after extolling the virtues of its plum sorbet, I have to report the disheartening news that Sketch, the gourmet ice-cream store on Fourth Street, is to close on July 26. [Hat tip: Eater SF.]
Owners Eric Shelton and Ruthie Planas say they are shutting up their first [business] baby in order to concentrate on their first real baby whose arrival is expected in about a month.
This from their website: “It’s been a great five years getting to know many of you (many by name, some by facial recognition, some by their consistent ordering patterns) and seeing many of your children grow from the womb on up to being able to see over the counter.”
They stress that Sketch isn’t disappearing, however, “just taking a ‘lil break from the retail aspect”. Their candies, pastries, sauces/fixins, ice cream cakes and other custom orders will be available online.
Add another vacant retail space to the growing number on Fourth Street.
Food, Retail, West Berkeley
Another opening to report. The Dailey Method is opening a studio in Berkeley today in The Elmwood.
The Dailey Method, which promises to get you “longer, leaner, stronger and more fit”, is a group fitness regimen inspired by exercise guru Lotte Berk. This will be the company’s eleventh Bay Area location.
The studio is at 2631B Ashby Avenue, close to College, in a building that has long been empty, so it will be good to see it occupied. For a while it looked like it would be leased to a large restaurant, but that idea was nixed by concerns over increased traffic and decreased parking opportunities. The Dailey Method website promises “an ample parking lot conveniently located behind the building”.
More information can be found here.
No news yet on the other vacant retail spaces in the same building.
Business, Retail, The Elmwood
Business, Retail, The Elmwood
You’ve got to love BioFuel Oasis. First off, this women-run cooperative launched, in 2003, the only bio-diesel station in the East Bay (and possibly the whole Bay for all I know) out of a run-down warehouse in west Berkeley.
Now they have taken over a 1933 (traditional) gas station that had seen better days and, largely with their own sweat equity, transformed it into, well, a veritable oasis.
The place looks great — with planters under canopies and solar panels keeping the whole place powered up.
BioFuel Oasis is run by Novella Carpenter, Jennifer Radtke, Margaret Farrow, Ace Anderson and Melissa Hardy and it’s having its official grand opening celebration on Saturday July 18, noon to 5pm. There will be “grillin’ and chillin” with free food and non-alcoholic drinks, a live band and — wait for it — a fuel filter changing rodeo.
It’s free and all are welcome. Find details here.
Business, Events, Green, Green living, Retail
Business, Green, Retail
Smith & Hawken, which was a pioneering green retailer, is closing all its stores, including Berkeley’s at 1330 10th Street. Founders Dave Smith and Paul Hawken are long gone from the store they founded. Hawken has become a leading figure in the environmental movement and a best-selling author.
Smith & Hawken was acquired in 2004 by Scotts Miracle-Gro. The connection between the carefully curated store and catalog group and the mass-market Scotts was never clear. As an occasional visitor to the Berkeley store in recent years, the retail group seemed to have lost any sense of what once made it special.
Photo by Andreas Balzer from Flickr
Business, Retail
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