"Cody's owner, Hiroshi Kagawa of the Japanese firm IBC Publishing...September 2006: Andy Ross sells Cody's to a Japanese firm." Does something suggest it might have stopped being what it was, about two years ago?

They obviously didn't carry enough Oprah reccomendations........................................

It's all about cheap prices, and I bet Cody's was way more expensive than amazon or even Borders. Unique is all well and good for those who can afford the luxury of it, but don't knock Oprah-and amazon. The latter has made books affordable for more people than ever before, and the former has, through her recommendations,  singlehandedly breathed air into an industry that was once given up for dead. She's put food on the table for more first time authors since Shawn was heading the New Yorker, and taken what was reserved for the white,  intellectual Cody's et al. denizens and opened up the whole field.

Taint wrote:

Cody's was an excellent bookstore right up until the end.

The last Cody’s on Shattuck had fewer books than even Pegasus (another Bay Area chain) and way less than Half Price Books both just a few blocks away.  And don’t forget Shakespeare right across the street where the old Cody’s used to be on Telegraph plus niche stores like Dark Carnival and The Other Change of Hobbit.  Don’t get me wrong, the old Cody’s on the Ave. was great in its day, but they stopped carrying a large variety of stuff in the late 90’s.  It was sad to watch its lingering death.

Zookeeper wrote:

And here I was thinking this would be a bath house thread...

It's SF, not NYC. Diff'rent strokes.

Ironic that firebombing doesn't put it out of business but apathy does.

In the big scheme of things it makes no difference anyways...  Here we are hurdling around a dying star that's destined to expand burning up everything mankind has ever created save a few rogue satellites that have been thrown into the vastness of space....  Rather than concern ourselves with some San Francisco bookstore or with saving the environment or other such nonsense we should be living for the moment...  Dirckman says use up our stores of fossil fuels, supersize that Big Mac meal, get that hooker with the peg leg........

Dirckman wrote:

In the big scheme of things it makes no difference anyways...  Here we are hurdling around a dying star that's destined to expand burning up everything mankind has ever created save a few rogue satellites that have been thrown into the vastness of space....  Rather than concern ourselves with some San Francisco bookstore or with saving the environment or other such nonsense we should be living for the moment...  Dirckman says use up our stores of fossil fuels, supersize that Big Mac meal, get that hooker with the peg leg........

Dang, Now whenever Dirkman says anything I picture the words coming out of that guy Sofa posted driving aimlessly around the middle of nowhere.