Another piece of what made downtown Granville South the tenderloin of Vancouver is going away. The ABC Book & Comic Emporium (1234 Granville, between Davie and Drake) will be closing this fall and moving elsewhere, casualty of increasing rent downtown.

I've always loved used bookstores. Moreso than first-sale bookstores, they're a testament to the continuing success of the book in our society. Books are so cheap yet durable that they're still usable decades after they are first sold. Long before Napster putting the music industry into a panic, the publishing industry was quite comfortable with an entire industry devoted to buying and selling books after their first sale, technically piracy, but also providing a valuable service in keeping out of print books available and cheap.

The staff at ABC are quick to point out that they're not going the way of the Granville Book Company in 2005 and closing, just moving to another location, possibly up on West Broadway. They haven't announced a location or date for the move yet, other than sometime in October. The ABC recently moved across the street from its previous location, and before that had lived there for decades. It' shelves and barrels of super cheap books are a major source of reading material for poor people in downtown Vancouver.

Downtown now looks like a city in almost violent upheaval, open pits and construction cranes everywhere as the city spruces itself up for the Olympics, even if the makeover is only skin deep. It's a perfect illustration of the adage that "cities consume buildings."

I don't want to fall into the nostalgic trap of "a video store where there used to be real live actors", but I do fear that the "beyond Robson" part of Vancouver is getting a little smaller each day, There will still be used bookstores and funky cafes and locally designed boutiques and all that, but will they be scattered all over the city, far away from each other?

Photos by Peter Tupper