Octopus Overlords

Kraken wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2018 7:20 pm Shopping as recreation or socialization might fall away, but some products and services are still best seen in stores -- shoes come to mind; unless the industry standardizes sizing across brands, one must try them on. The same is true of most clothing. I've been hearing about mass-customization delivering bespoke clothing to the plebes for years, and yet it's perpetually just around the corner. Luxuries like jewelry need a tactile connection. People like to see a television picture before they shell out big bucks for it. Same with high-end audio. Stores will surely get knocked back -- that's already happening -- but they will always have a niche.

I loved record stores when LPs ruled the earth and cover art was, well, art. I have a T-shirt from a college used-and-new record store called Flat, Black, & Circular. That store managed to hang on somehow until just a few years ago.

Media Play was my favorite.

"I feel like my 19-year-old child is dying," Gottlieb said, fighting back a tear as she looked across rows of half-empty bookshelves. "The Hobbit has always been an extension of my living room. I had always assumed that I would be able to find anything I wanted on my own shelves."

Gottlieb opened A Change of Hobbit in 1972 in a 12-by-15-foot room above a coin laundry in Westwood. She moved later to Westwood Boulevard, then to a third site among auto repair shops and fast-food outlets on Lincoln Boulevard in Santa Monica. Finally, she settled in the 2nd Street location in the summer of 1989. The name was a takeoff on the creatures in J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy, "The Lord of the Rings."

Word of the Hobbit's closing is cause for sadness in the science fiction publishing world as well as among Gottlieb's stalwart customers.

"This is horrible news," said science fiction writer Anne Rice from her home in New Orleans. "Authors around the world have dreamed of going to the Hobbit for signings. What's a West Coast tour if you can't visit Sherry?"

Gottlieb first sponsored a signing party for Rice in 1985 for the book "Vampire Lestat." The author has returned several times since, most recently in November to promote her book "The Witching Hour."

Gottlieb has hosted more than 200 signing parties, featuring such other noted authors as Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison and Frank Herbert.

The store will probably be missed most of all by its regulars, the people who visit often to browse, to read, to attend the signings. And among the things they will miss is the roguish style of the proprietor. At one time, the raven-haired Gottlieb wore a purple streak through her hair. For the last 10 years, she has kept her six-foot pet boa constrictor, Wrinklesnakeskin, in a cage among the bookshelves.

Crisis mode on (again): sales in December and January were so slow that we fell behind on the rent. We grossed half of what we had last year in the old location.

Immediate crisis: Need to raise $4K by the end of the weekend (Sunday, February the 16th -- our landlord doesn't care that the banks aren't open on President's Day, Monday).

After A Change of Hobbit had been open for two months, it occurred to me that perhaps the science-fiction authors would like to know about it, so one night, I began searching the Los Angeles telephone book for all the writers I could think of. I found a surprising number of them listed, so I phoned and told them about my bookstore. (I still remember my husband waking me at 11:30 pm to tell me Harlan Ellison was on the phone, returning my call.)

Someone suggested I call Forrest J Ackerman – "Just dial MOON-FAN." -- I hadn’t heard of Forrie before, but was informed that he was the man who coined the term "sci-fi".

"Mr. Ackerman? My name is Sherry Gottlieb and I’ve recently opened a science-fiction and fantasy bookstore in Westwood. It’s called A Change of Hobbit."

"Who are you? I’ve never heard of you! Where did you come from?" he asked me with an astonishment I didn’t understand at the time.

"Uh...Sherry Gottlieb," I repeated. "I’m from Los Angeles."

Although I had been reading science-fiction since I was a kid, I was totally unaware of science-fiction fandom, which had been an established path to SF professionalism since long before my birth. If anyone were to open an SF bookstore, Ackerman was sure it would have been a well-connected fan, not a mere reader.

Within the next few days, several local professional writers dropped in, so I took Polaroid photos of each one and got them to autograph them for my "Rogues’ Gallery of Distinguished Visitors". I thought, like me, the readers might want to know what the authors looked like; I didn’t know one could meet them at science-fiction conventions – I didn’t know about cons then, either.

Those earliest visitors included Norman Spinrad, Alan Dean Foster, Larry Niven, David Gerrold...and Harlan Ellison, who arrived with his entourage of young writers, Edward Bryant and James Sutherland.

Shortly afterwards, Ed wrote an article on my store for the Los Angeles Flyer of Rolling Stone magazine: "Informality and character – the shop brims with it.... It’s that special ambience you find in a good pipe and tobacco shop, except postdated in the future."

Harlan told me if I’d host an autograph party for his new hardcover anthology, AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS, he’d bring several of the authors whose stories appeared in the book. He also wrote an advertisement for the event for The Daily Bruin, the UCLA student newspaper:

Come and bankrupt yourself purchasing this cornerstone of magic fiction and meet Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., James Blish, David Gerrold, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Sophocles, Friedrich Nietzche, Chang Tao-Ling, Benito Mussolini, Judge Crater or none of the above!

Banal punch will be served as Mr. Ellison autographs copies of his hernia-producing volume, insults visitors indiscriminately, hustles female students who wander in with their laundry from the Kleenco Complex, and for the first time anywhere, reads his latest unpublished story! Surely the social event of the decade!

The autograph party was an unqualified success – except for the fact that my tiny store could hold only about 20 people (and not comfortably, either, particularly because of the heat rising from the laundromat downstairs); the attending authors alone nearly filled the store! The turnout was sufficient to spill over onto the mezzanine and people had to circulate into the store in shifts. And they bought books, lots of books.