Yet more Independent Book Store "Day" Reportage

Bessie poses at Kerry Park

It's all beginning to feel so long ago that I figure I'd best continue the tale soon or I'll have forgotten all about it and what a loss that would be to the world. After seeing Scott off to work on Monday morning, I headed out on Bessie to see about getting a stamp from Queen Anne Book Company. There were predictions of rain--and possibly even thunder showers--but it seemed pretty sunny when I set out.

As I likely said earlier, we'd left QABC out of our original route because it's on top of Queen Anne and that's some seriously intimidating elevation gain, at least by our standards (275 feet in just over half a mile). But I'm not too proud to make use of Metro so I biked to Uptown, as lower Queen Anne is seemingly called, and put Bessie on a bus to get up the counterbalance. I did manage to ride back down the hill, but I tried to zigzag a little and I admit I got off and walked a block because I really don't care for the angle in either direction.

 

Queen Anne feels very much like a locals' bookstore, and I always feel like a tourist there. Unlike previous visits on Actual Book Store Day, it was pretty quiet so I didn't get quite the same party crasher feeling as I have in the past, but I still had a nigh-on impossible time finding a book to buy. They didn't have some of the obvious options--the NYRB book I hadn't bought elsewhere or anything by Nora Ephron (whose I Feel Bad About My Neck had come up in conversation the day before). Because I had to get something, I finally decided on a book about an alternative London, because that's usually a safe trope:

I was clearly not myself as I couldn't find anything I wanted even at the bakery next door but the descent, treacherous though it was, seemed to restore me to myself and I opted to stop by Sugar for a slice of cake to go.

The stop meant that I was caught in the torrential downpour that started some fifteen minutes later, but I insist cake is never a mistake.

Still to come (maybe): Burien, Georgetown, AND adventures further north. And previous entry here