A conclusion for Cody's
Famed shop closes the book on years of anchoring Telegraph Avenue
Simone Sebastian, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, July 10, 2006
His hands shoved in his pockets and his lips pursed in emotional exhaustion, Cody's Books owner Andy Ross struggled to answer the question that everyone wanted to know.
How could the soul of Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue shut down?
"Everybody has a theory about why this happened," he told one of hundreds of writers and longtime customers who crowded among the store's classic wooden bookshelves for its 50th anniversary celebration Sunday.
The store was festively decorated, and there were balloons, a birthday cake and streamers. There was even a woman crafting balloon figures for the children.
But all the confetti could not mask that the event was not only a celebration but also a funeral.
Today, the original Cody's Books will open at 11 a.m. and close for the very last time at 8 p.m.
"How strange it feels to say that. How poignant and unbelievable," writer Maxine Hong Kingston said Sunday, noting that she first came to the store 48 years ago as a freshman at UC Berkeley.
"I walked in and found my haven and my home. It felt eternal. It felt like it would be here forever."
Cody's Books opened in a 16-foot-by-29-foot Berkeley storefront on Euclid Avenue July 9, 1956, and featured paperback books and local authors.
Founders Fred and Pat Cody made $42.67 their first day, selling books for 50 to 95 cents apiece.
Pat Cody had a degree in economics and managed the store's finances while her husband picked the books.
Fred Cody, who died on the store's 27th anniversary, was gregarious and charismatic and quickly won customers' loyalty.
The Codys were humanists in every sense. They had a strong aversion to censorship and infused their bookshelves with variety. They made the store an intellectual haven to Berkeley's leftists.
"The Republicans, I don't know how many there were in Berkeley, but they would not be coming here," Pat Cody, 82, said Sunday. "Our big success was the community telling us what they wanted and us listening. (The store) reflected the concerns, the thinking of the community."
But as clearinghouses started doing business by computer, the Codys felt out of place.
"We could see the computer was coming. It was like a black hole for us," Pat Cody said. "We didn't want to deal with it."
They had moved to a larger location on Telegraph Avenue and on July 9, 1977 -- the 21st anniversary -- they sold it to then-30-year-old Ross.
Ross computerized the business and saw it boom in the 1980s. But even as online sales of books became a major revenue source for bookstores, Ross resisted the trend.
It ran counter to Cody's founding philosophy -- books were meant to be browsed in person and knowledge discovered, he said Sunday.
"Students today, they use the Internet. They read their textbooks," Ross said. "In the '70s, they had wide-ranging intellect."
There are 23 spots open on Telegraph Avenue's commercial strip near the UC campus, out of 210 commercial spaces, a vacancy rate some local leaders have blamed on a decline in foot traffic and rise in street crime in the area. Mayor Tom Bates said at Sunday's event that he has a $360,000 plan to increase police presence there and to clean the street, renovate storefronts and bring in more social workers. He promised that visitors will see changes soon. Bates also lamented the impact of online commerce.
Ross recalled all the historic moments the store has seen: the evening it was firebombed for carrying Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses"; the day protesters picketed visiting editor Gloria Steinem for advertising cigarettes in Ms. magazine; the day in 1990 when thousands of customers showed up to see Muhammad Ali; and the day when Jimmy Carter visited and the store sold 1,600 books in less than two hours. Unfortunately, the books were discounted -- "a critical mistake," Ross recalled.
Halfway through his prepared speech, Ross suddenly stopped.
His eyes blinked rapidly behind his glasses.
He stepped from behind the podium, and the room exploded in applause.
Ross' wife, Leslie Berkler, took his place at the microphone.
"For all these 41 years, this store has been marching to the beat of a different drummer," she said, referring to Cody's stay at on Telegraph. She had continued Ross' speech where he left off.
"It is with great sadness that I must say that the world does not embrace these values today," she said. "To our loyal customers, who do embrace these values, I am sorry that we are letting you down. I truly wish that we could have kept this store alive for another 50 years. But we can't. There just aren't enough of you to make it work."
Cody's two other, smaller stores -- on Fourth Street in Berkeley and on Stockton Street in San Francisco -- will remain open.
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