There’s good news, and flowers, for Cellar Door Books
Hearing that Cellar Door Books was to be honored by the Riverside City Council, I decided to attend. It would be a chance to get an update on the independent bookstore, the one whose future was suddenly imperiled like the heroine of a dramatic novel.
It’s a pleasure to report some good news: The store has been granted a few weeks longer to move and may have lined up a new location, owner Linda Sherman-Nurick told me from her seat in the front row of the Council Chambers on Tuesday evening.
Cellar Door was originally informed by Canyon Crest Towne Centre management in mid-January that its lease would be terminated Tuesday, and then was given until March 31 after yours truly inquired. And now?
“They are letting us stay until May 15,” Sherman-Nurick told me.
“That might be a decent sort of time frame to get out of there appropriately,” she said cheerfully. “All our customers and our lawyer helped make that happen, and we’re grateful.”
Our lawyer? That’s Ken MacVey of powerhouse law firm Best Best & Krieger, who donated his services to negotiate with the shopping center’s management. He was seated in the second row on Tuesday.
Did you have to get tough with Canyon Crest, I asked? He smiled.
“I think they understand the situation,” MacVey said.
In business for 10 years, all of them as a tenant of Canyon Crest, Cellar Door was faced with immediately finding a new location, preparing it to become a bookstore, packing up 10,000 books and moving them.
As that was highly unlikely to be pulled off in one or two months, the store would have also had to find storage space in the interim and thus essentially move twice.
MacVey volunteered his skills because he’s a Cellar Door customer and wants to see the store survive.
“I think the bookstore is an
institution. It's a community asset,” MacVey said. “Bookstores require protecting.”
The Canyon Crest play space Kiddos 101, meanwhile, still must leave by March 31 and plans to close for good March 23, its seventh anniversary. No word yet from Romano's Pizza or Marisa's Italian Deli, the two other businesses on month-to-month leases who got notices of termination.
Cellar Door appears to have found a new spot in Riverside a couple of miles to the south.
“We think we have a good place. We have an application in for a space and are waiting to hear back,” Sherman-Nurick told me.
Where? “In Mission Grove, right across from Sprouts,” she said. “Plenty of parking. And the owners seem to be perfectly fine with who we are and what we do.”
That's a reference to Cellar Door's operating philosophy, which is to be welcoming to all, to put an emphasis on marginalized communities and to host a quarterly Drag Queen Storytime. Which means the store gets pushback and protests from a few local busybodies who wave signs outside or insult strangers through a bullhorn.
Sherman-Nurick and I had barely begun to talk when a little boy approached with his parents. He held a bouquet of flowers and shyly presented them to her. She gave him a hug.
It was loyal customer Brian Warren-MacKay, 4.
“He's a Cellar Door baby,” said his mom,
Marla.
“He calls it ‘My Linda's,'” said his father, Cody.
“All of his books are from Cellar Door,” Marla continued. “He brings her artwork and flowers. It's where we get all of his train books.”
Trains? I like this kid already.
“We order books with him in mind,” ShermanNurick said.
The family was at the council meeting to show their support for the store. Cody teaches English at Colton High and has relied on Sherman-Nurick for book recommendations as well as ideas of short stories he can assign for his writing class.
Now, about the meeting. Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, whose Ward 2 includes Canyon Crest, presented the store with a Riverside Prospers Success Story award. Rarely has one of these rah-rah honors seemed less anodyne and more timely.
Cervantes highlighted the store's events to promote local authors, its matching of reluctant young readers with books and its hosting of a variety of communityled book clubs, from memoirs and mysteries to romance novels and diverse/ queer books.
Cervantes said of Sherman-Nurick: “She's beloved in Riverside for creating a space where the community feels like they belong.”
The Cellar Door staff posed for photos with Cervantes and the rest of the council. Sherman-Nurick clutched her bouquet of flowers.
Speaker Melody Clark said she and her family are Cellar Door regulars.
“How blessed we are to have an independent bookstore. How different it is than buying a book off Amazon,” Clark told the council. “Amazon has an algorithm that, if you buy one book, it will recommend a book similar to the one you just bought. Linda or her staff will give you books you've never heard of before.”
They might also give you another book about trains, if that's your thing. The point is, they know their audience.
Muddying the water
During the period for councilmember reports, Chuck Conder said water conservation needs to continue and “messaging” around the issue needs to be consistent. Then he said: “While we have had some good, significant water over the last three weeks, keep in mind, people, the drought is not over. Like any responsible family, you put money aside for a rainy day.”
brIEfly
James Spooner's “The High Desert” is hardly the only memoir in comics form. Brian Fies' “A Fire Story” is his personal account of the 2017 wildfires in Northern California that killed 44 and destroyed thousands of homes, including the one owned by Fies and his wife. “A Fire Story” is the community read in Claremont as chosen by the Friends of the Claremont Library. Fies will speak at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Hughes Center, 1700 Danbury Road. Bring your burning curiosity.