Blue Bicycle Books | The George Street Observer
Date published: 04/01/2011
Blue Bicycle Books on King Street in downtown Charleston doesn’t lure in customers with lattes and jazz CDs. There’s no adjacent café or complicated window displays. The store holds more than 50,000 rare, used and local volumes, but looks more like the home of a literary hoarder. Cat included.
“I like the no frills feeling,” said customer Jacob Keller, as he perused the creative nonfiction section. “What an innovative concept – a bookstore that’s just about books.”
College students, tourists and locals shuffle through the narrow paths with their heads cocked to the left, reading names of titles and authors. A lucky few will get a leg rub from Purdy, the owners’ 11-year-old cat who follows customers like a pushy salesgirl.
Blue Bicycle Books, nicknamed Blue Bike, extends 174-feet back from the King Street storefront. Charleston materials, including Civil War books, historic documents and local authors, sit in the front. Regulars know the best deals are the dollar books tucked away in the back room.
“The door leading to the back room is intimidating. I thought it was the adult section the first time I was here,” said Kelly Kripal, who bought Julia Child’s memoir, My Life in France for a dollar.
Jonathon Sanchez has owned Blue Bike with his wife Lauren since 2007, when the original owners of the then Boomer’s Books retired. Sanchez, an author and Boomer’s Books employee since 1998, knows how rare it is to be successful in the used book business.
“Our stock comes from so many different places because we don’t use distributors,” Sanchez said. “It’s mine and Lauren’s responsibility to process every book and remember that this store is run with readers in mind, not distributors.”
Sanchez knows his customers don’t expect the latest literary fads.
“This is a thrift store for books. Remember a few years ago when The Da Vinci Code was everywhere? We carry it now,” Sanchez said.
Past the Charleston history, and the omnipresent Pat Conroy display, are closets that have been converted into reading rooms set up with tables and chairs. The literature room is filled with poetry, classics and rare books.
The kids reading room is Blue Bike’s only pop of color. Green walls, a striped rug and brown shelves are lined with first additions of Dr. Seuss, Judy Blume and The Hardy Boys series. Customer Victoria Plummer sits at a child-size table under bubble lamps, flipping through Oh, The Places You’ll Go, priced at $4.95.
“When my daughter was pregnant I came here and bought the baby all the picture books I read to my children growing up,” Plummer said, “Books are always a good gift, so I try to stop by this store whenever someone has a birthday coming up.”
The kids’ room is Sanchez’s favorite section of Blue Bike. When children see a favorite book, they stop everything and plop on the table or floor to read.
“I don’t see grown men jump up in down screaming, ‘A Ulysses S. Grant biography! I love Ulysses S. Grant!’ like kids do when they see Clifford or the Berenstain Bears,” Sanchez said.
Many customers are overwhelmed by the sheer selection to choose from. Some buy dozens of books and others leave empty-handed after an hour of browsing, but the staff does not push anyone to buy.
“Bookstores are a great place to pass the time,” said Blue Bike employee Sara Peck, “We get a lot of people stopping in on their way to dinner or after an event. I enjoy the customers’ company, so I would never be too forceful with them.”
At the oversized register, Peck and another staff member price books. Purdy, meanwhile, eyes a dog passing outside. Stacks of paperwork and loose books waiting to be shelved surround them. Peck delicately writes $3.95 on the inside of Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms.
In the cooking section, a blue-haired woman compares Junior League cookbooks. The tourist and New Orleans native, Mary Evyln Hart, decides to go with the more expensive book, $7.25 vs. $5.95, because it includes a chapter on place settings.
“Last time I was in Charleston was in the early 1990s and I would have never walked this far up King Street,” Hart said, “I’m pleased to see the city has cleaned up the area because there isn’t a selection like this at Barnes and Noble.”
