Page Turner
By Daily Bruin Staff
April 26, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 ANGIE LEVINE Sheldon McArthur owns
Mystery Bookstore in Westwood. He noted that independent bookstores
are rare in the village.
By Sharon Kim
Daily Bruin Contributor
Westwood Village may be known to some as a trendy spot with a
number of good restaurants and specialty shops, but one type of
store ““ the independent bookstore ““ is becoming an
endangered species.
Except for Mystery Bookstore on Broxton Avenue and the Christian
Science Reading Room on Glendon Avenue, such stores in the Village
have been a rarity since the early 1930s.
In March, an all-French bookstore called La Cité ““
which first opened in 1948 just south of the village ““ was
forced to pack up and close shop for good.
“I think the main problem independent bookstores have to
face is chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble,” said
Iris Smaus, the librarian at the Christian Science Reading
Room.
“These chain stores are great, but they draw people away
from the small bookstores,” she said.
In 1999, a bookstore called Sisterhood went out of business
after 28 years of operation at the same Westwood location.
“It was originally a gathering place with various
literature on the women’s movement going on during that
period,” said Simone Wallace, who, along with her partner
Adele, founded Sisterhood. “But pretty soon the collection
and demand grew so much that we decided to make a business out of
Sisterhood.”
 Illustration by JASON CHEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Adele Wallace said that for many of its early years, the store
served as a unique center for the women’s movement. Prominent
figures involved with the women’s movement, such as Gloria
Steinem and Alice Walker, visited the store.
“We offered books by and about women,” she said, but
added that the books were for men as well as women.
In 1996, Borders Bookstore opened near Sisterhood, and the store
began experiencing a gradual decline that led to its closing in
1999.
According to the former owners of Sisterhood, the physical
presence of Borders so near the store and general changes in
consumer trends contributed to the decline in business.
Guy Adams, manager of UCLA BookZone, said the situation of
independent bookstores is a trend felt all over the country.
“Chains have been getting discounts behind closed doors
that others were not getting,” said Adams. “And when
small stores have to make decisions everyday as to how to spend
their capital, even a small percentage point here and there has an
enormous impact.”
Last week, the American Booksellers Association and 26
independent bookstores settled a lawsuit filed against Borders
Group Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc. for allegedly receiving
illegal discounts and deals from publishers that placed independent
bookstores at a competitive disadvantage.
Despite the suit being settled without any ruling regarding the
illegal discounts, the ABA feels the suit’s original goals
have been accomplished.
“We wanted to make people aware that there was in fact
unequal treatment toward chains compared to independent
bookstores,” said Scott McKinstry, ABA communications
manager.
Although the trial itself did not result in formal action to
prevent unfair discounts to large chains, changes were being made
when the lawsuit was taken to trial, according to McKinstry.
Sheldon McArthur ““ who, after 12 years of operation in
West Hollywood, moved his Mystery Bookstore to his hometown of
Westwood last October ““ does not think large chain bookstores
are a threat to his specialized store.
“Actually, a lot of the customers get referred to my store
when they don’t find what they want (at Borders),” said
McArthur.
“Borders does not even understand the genre of mystery
books,” he added, saying that Borders shelves their mystery
books in the fiction section. “They carry less than 1 percent
of the mystery titles that we carry.”
McArthur attributed the decline of independent bookstores in
Westwood to negative public perception about the village.
“People think Westwood is difficult to get to with no
parking and no business,” he said.
McArthur said that past violent incidents in Westwood,
specifically a shooting that left one woman dead in the early
’90s, also changed people’s perception of the area.
“The shooting incident was very heavily publicized,”
McArthur said. “There was a sad decline period following it
in the ’90s because of wrong public perspective.”
According to the official Westwood Village Web site, the
original village, constructed in 1929, was a “haven,”
with attractive shops, restaurants, and even an outdoor skating
rink.
Westwood’s first retail business was Campbell’s Book
Store, which opened in 1929 on Le Conte Avenue. The
bookstore’s appeal to the student population at UCLA set the
precedence for future Westwood businesses.
The store, however, was sold to a chain in the early 1970s.
For Adele Wallace, the lack of independent bookstores is just
one of the things she laments about a changing Westwood.
“There were so many cute little restaurants and
independently owned shops that had things that you couldn’t
get somewhere else,” she said. “These days Westwood has
gotten mammoth, full of chain stores.”
