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"A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking." --Jerry Seinfeld
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The last Samuel French Bookshop has closed.
Samuel French Bookshop
7623 Sunset Blvd.
Samuel French/Facebook
It originally opened in downtown Los Angeles in 1929 and moved to this location in 1947. In Los Angeles for 90 years. A Studio City location closed in 2012.
I was trying to find a photo of it from 1947, but no luck so far. (I also haven't discovered the address of that original downtown location.)
In the above photo, the building at the left side is on the corner of Sunset and Stanley. It is currently vacant. (Google shows that some remodeling is currently
happening.) Before that it was the Mediterranean influenced restaurant Acabar which opened in 2013, but only lasted until 2015.
Acabar
(the entrance)
Gayot
Before that was the Moroccan restaurant Dar Maghreb, which opened in 1974 and was there for 39 years.
City Search
(The entrance to these restaurants is on Stanley. Across the street is the former Preview House where studios had audiences to test out various pilots and commercials and such. It is now the Harmony Gold Theater which bills itself as a landmark screening and event facility.)
To the east of Samuel French in the above photo used to be "Ye Coach & Horses" -- what was described as "a historic watering hole designed in a classic Britain meets Hollywood style which opened in 1937 and was popular with British expats in Hollywood including Richard Burton and Alfred Hitchcock."
L.A.Taco
L.A.Taco
It closed in 2010 after 73 years, apparently due to increasing rents and some poor business decisions from the elderly owner.
It was reborn a couple years later as The Pikey.
Goop
The Pikey calls itself a Cafe & Bar, but is still a British pub restaurant. I like the place and I ate there recently for some fish & chips
and that's when I discovered Samuel French had just closed. We were going to visit the place as well.
To the east of The Pikey, on the next corner, is Bonham's Auction House, which often has showings of the items it is auctioning off.
Ninety seconds of drone footage of this area:
• Video Link
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I read that part of the reason Ye Coach & Horses closed is that Samuel French owns the building and they were trying to evict them for a new tenant who'd pay more rent, which they succeeded in doing. Ironically, Ye Coach & Horses lasted 73 years and Samuel French ended up one short at 72 years.
The reason given for the Samuel French Bookshop closing is the same reason all the bookstores I've frequented the past fifteen years have given. People come into the store, look around for things they want, take out their cellphones and find what online store they can get it for cheaper and then order it from them.
MY LAMENT: I miss all the stores where you'd come into contact with people with like minded interests and talk about the books (etc.) that you were interested in and all of the fantastic employees in these places who worked there because they were interested in their products and had so much information to offer a customer. Many of these places, like Samuel French, had lounges to sit in and coffee to drink and environments to inspire.
All those folks who used to work in bookstores, video stores, record/cd stores...what kind of work will they be doing? Are they doing? There is no replacing the kind of browsing and shopping one does in person with sitting in front of a computer screen that offers you:
Customers who purchased apples also purchased oranges.
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