Before Clara Villarosa became owner of the Hue-Man Experience Book Store in Denver in 1984, she was a social worker at The Children’s Hospital, where we’d met. Hue-Man had the largest collection of black authors west of Mississippi; many signed their books there.
Villarosa sold Hue-Man in 2000 and it went out of business three years later, but Villarosa’s new Hue-Man in Harlem is doing well.
So is Denver’s Tattered Cover.
For decades, many Denver book lovers met at the Tattered’s old two-floor establishment on Third Avenue in Cherry Creek. The crush of book lovers eventually made a move necessary. The Tattered made several stops before landing at its present premises on East First Avenue, in 1986. The LoDo and the Highlands Ranch branches were smart business moves, in 1994 and 2004, respectively.
Soon after Barnes & Noble moved into the area in the late ’90s, neighborhood bookstores’ stars waned. Today, the independent and family- owned bookstore is mostly a thing of the past, making the Tattered Cover a very pleasant anomaly.
The Tattered survives because for decades it “earned capital” with customers like me. It’s undeniably a local landmark that plays a vital part as the conscience of the city. Owner Joyce Meskis has been altruistic to a fault, supporting writers and readers in multiple ways.
But the Tattered is challenged by reader habits, supply and demand, the nature of today’s books and the proliferation of Internet “book stores.” Although it’s claimed that Americans no longer read books (some people claim they’ve never read a book ever, while many read a book a week), about 195,000 new titles are published each year.
E-books have been pushed for many years; however, there’s something otherworldly about an electronic tablet. Many of us love, cherish, even underline our books (albeit that’s desecration to some). There’s something magical about turning a page, placing a bookmark between chapters. Certainly, real paper books are here to stay.
That said, the cost of new books – $5 to $8 for a paperback, around $30 for hardcover – make books progressively inaccessible. This serves to keep readers out of places like the Tattered and drives them to mass-market book purveyors like Barnes & Noble.
Also vying for book-buyers’ business is the Internet, where a shopper can compare prices. I confess that I’ve done it: In my desire to read old masters such as John Donne, Milton, Francis Bacon and Maupassant, I tried the Tattered, but it didn’t stock “old books.” An online bookseller, Alibris.com, tracked down every book that I had wanted.
The business of book buying and selling has changed over time. Independent booksellers have had to adapt. As anyone who’s been to the Tattered Cover knows, the Fourth Story Restaurant & Bar offers great food, a gorgeous view of the Rockies and a walk among the tomes.
It’s obvious that booksellers have to reinvent themselves to bring the book buyer back to the store. The Tattered has had book clubs, musical events and other functions.
I’m sad that the Hue-Man didn’t survive the competition, couldn’t attract enough readers of color or wasn’t able to relocate to where there were more readers.
The Tattered has been tested and has survived the tempest. I hope it weathers the competition and finds ways to engage the next generation of readers by showing it the value of books and reading. Meskis’ Tattered Cover is a corporate citizen that every book-lover should endeavor to support, whatever direction it takes in the future.
Pius Kamau of Aurora is a thoracic and general surgeon. He was born and raised in Kenya and immigrated to the U.S. in 1971.
