Bookshop tells stories chains can’t

These could have been bad days for Bob Weinstein. Really dark ones. November is fast upon him, which means that it won’t be much longer now for his beloved Book Baron in Anaheim. If we wanted to wax rhapsodic, we could say the Huns are battering at the gates of the literary fortress he’s defended for the last 28 years.

Forget the Huns and bad metaphors. Weinstein has very real problems: like coming in every day and staring at a sign that no business owner wants to see: “70% Off.”

So, yeah, he could be miserable, but he isn’t. Nothing lasts forever, but if anything should, it’s probably old bookstores like the Book Baron.

Weinstein’s baby is succumbing to a landlord’s doubling the rent in the decidedly unimpressive-looking retail center on Magnolia Avenue just south of Ball Road. The good news is that lack of interest isn’t shutting down the bookstore, just good old-fashioned American retail commerce.

But that doesn’t mean the neighborhood isn’t losing something important. Weinstein, 65, is retiring so he and his wife can spend more time with their grandchildren, but he’d closed a deal with a new owner to keep the store going.

The rent hike soured that deal, so the store with a quarter-million books will shutter up by year’s end, and take with it the years of customers sifting through books and their own memories.

“I grew up in this neighborhood,” says a not-too-happy assistant store manager Myra Devenecia. “I went to Dale Junior High and Magnolia High School, and this place was here when I was a kid.” She’s 43 now and has worked at the store for eight years.

She’s one of those people who finds comfort and stimulation in such stores, in ways that one can’t always find in a Barnes & Noble or a Borders. “We have things that Barnes & Noble doesn’t have,” she says, “only because we get books that have been well-loved by other people before. Sometimes, you’ll get a book that will have writing in it from a former owner, with beautiful script writing, that someone in 1903 had actually owned that book and cared enough to write their name in it. You wonder, ‘What happened to them?’ ”

Those are genuine pleasures to lots of people, but certainly not everyone. Weinstein makes it clear, however, that it isn’t the big retail bookstores that are forcing his store to close. “People think Barnes & Noble is in competition with us. They’re no competition, whatsoever,” he says. “I wouldn’t mind if they opened up next door. It wouldn’t bother me at all.”

The two stores sell different products, and his rare and used-book store has done quite well since it opened. “It’s been a great 28 years,” he says. “When I opened this place up, I was 37 years old, had dark hair and weighed 100 pounds less.”

He’s ready to retire, but not to watch loyal customers come in and pick the shelves clean. Michael Rochford is a longtime admirer of the store and was touring the rows Monday morning in search of some Sherlock Holmes material.

But even without a plan, a trip to the store is a treat, he says. “What I like mostly is to come in and find a book that I really like that I never heard of,” he says. “I always end up buying things I literally never heard of.”

I challenged him to come up with a title. Without missing a beat, he says, “ ‘Dentistry and Its Victims,’ which I never read, but I liked the title.” That was probably 20 years ago, Rochford says. More recently, like last week, he picked up a book for a dollar on beekeepers, despite having no interest in the subject, he says.

If only to prove Weinstein’s point, Rochford says he frequently goes to a Barnes & Noble, partly for coffee but also to browse. But that has never stopped him from making the nearly 30-minute trip from his home to the Book Baron when the mood strikes.

Weinstein isn’t going kicking and screaming, but he agrees that a certain amount of mourning is appropriate for the Book Baron’s demise. “I can’t say I’m not going to miss it. I am. I’ll probably cry,” he says about the last day.

And he makes the point with a story that he’s probably told before. “About 20 years ago, I had an old guy come in here,” Weinstein says.

“He’d been living out here for many years and said he was looking for a book he’d had when he was a kid, so I sent him back to where the boys’ books are. Anyhow, about 15 minutes later, he’s holding a book in his hand, and he’s shaking. He not only found the book, he found his name in it, when he was 9 years old. Can you believe that? He found his own copy, right on the shelf. The guy was actually crying. He was 80 years old or something, and tears were rolling down his cheeks.”

That’s a story you don’t get at Barnes & Noble.

And as Weinstein finishes telling it, with relish and fondness, he looks every bit the proud father finally ready to say goodbye.

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Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.