Green Apple Going Rogue

With all due to respect to the Republicans who were as overjoyed as I was (for different reasons, of course) by Sarah Palin's nomination to the McCain ticket last year, Green Apple is donating 100% of the profits from sales of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue: An American Life to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance.


For a respectful and professional review of the book, instead of our touchy-feely knee-jerk urban liberalism, see Michiko Kakutani's review in the New York Times.

Stuffin'

I don't know about you, but I am a Thanksgiving fan, man! Yeah sure, Christmas is pretty awesome (I love jingle-jams), and May Day is probably just about as important as holidays get (all hail) , but Thanksgiving, yeah, I'm pretty in to it. It's kind of like the overlooked little brother to Christmas, which honestly I think is pretty unfair to a holiday with such a long and complex history. Here's what former President George W. Bush had to say on the subject in his 2007 Thanksgiving address at the Berkeley Plantation, originally known as the Virginia Colony (y'know, a stripe on the flag, dude)- "In the four centuries since the founders of Berkeley first knelt on these grounds, our nation has changed in many ways. Our people have prospered, our nation has grown, our Thanksgiving traditions have evolved -- after all, they didn't have football back then. Yet the source of all our blessings remains the same: We give thanks to the Author of Life who granted our forefathers safe passage to this land, who gives every man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth the gift of freedom, and who watches over our nation every day."

No football indeed, ha ha! We sure didn't George! But even without modern conveniences like The NFL or Safeway I'll bet the early colonizers could still glaze a turkey so shiny you could see yourself in it. If you don't know how to do that already Green Apple has a wall near collapsing with the weight of its cookbooks that can help. Don't eat meat? No problem. The vegetarian section here is slammin'. Heck, we've even got a pretty solid raw food section if you're not in to the whole oven (check out books from the Ani's Raw Food Kitchen series, she's a babe!). Best of all the Food Not Bombs cookbook'll teach you how to prepare anything you want in bulk for the entire neighborhood, and from what I've gleaned from my six years and seven apartments in this city, there are a couple of districts in this city that could use some reasons to be thankful.

Now there's a little less than two weeks till the fateful Thursday. I really do hope everyone's gonna' have a good one with family, friends, or even just peace and quite if you prefer. I myself will be enjoying they way the city empties out over the holiday, chilling out and cooking up something weird with my rad Mom. I've even picked out a semi Thanksgiving related nonfiction title to read, Ward Churchill's From a Native Son. I'm looking forward to it!

A woodcut of early Thanksgiving festivities, circa 1622.

The Halfway Cafe...

One thing we love about the Richmond District is the food. As Pete mentioned before in his "Enough about books, let's talk sandwiches" post, there are a number of great places to get a quality sandwich on Clement Street.

I now have a new favorite...

The Halfway Cafe on 6th Ave, near California (200 6th Ave. to be exact).

The Halfway has been open for about a month now, and while they are testing out their hours, they have assured me they will be open Monday through Friday from 8(ish) in the morning to 4(ish) in the afternoon, 9 to 4 on Saturday, and 10 to 4 on Sundays. . .at least until they can gauge how busy they will be.

The Halfway is run and owned by the rad East Coast transplants and best friends of sixteen years, Megan Boreman and Erin Reffsin. After living and traveling the world, owning two restaurants, and having a combined thirty-plus years in the restaurant industry, Megan and Erin decided to open a sandwich shop and cafe in San Francisco. They were looking at the Financial District until they stumbled on the small shop at the corner of 6th and California. They fell in love with the neighborhood and are serving up great food.

They serve all organic, fresh ingredients and Pierce Bros. Coffee which is 100% Organic, 100% Fair Trade, and Air Roasted for a smooth taste.

Here are some of the highlights on the menu...

The Kamil Shill breakfast burrito is awesome. It's egg, sweet potato hash, black beans, tomato and cheese for $6.50.

The D.R. sandwich: turkey with greens, onion, tomato and a cranberry aioli. . .like all the sandwiches, you get a choice of potato or pasta salad.

Vegetarian? There's the Nancy (hummus, greens, tomato, onion and carrots) or the Killa K (tomato and mozzarella with a pesto aioli).

So check out the Halfway, tell them Green Apple Books sent you, and welcome them to the neighborhood.

Flutter by Butterflies

Well, I guess that I'll come right out and admit it - I've got a serious case of nerves going this weekend. It's the good kind of jitters, the excited kind, but still I feel like I may be getting in a bit over my head. Why? Because this coming Monday evening I've been invited to speak on a panel at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on 'The Future of Books." And yes, tickets are still available...

It's not that I'm without opinions on this subject. And certainly, I've got a crystal ball and I know how to use it. It's just that not only will I be the lone soul at the table representing the glories of the organic tome, I'm also the only one there without my own wikipedia page. O.K. maybe it's not quite that bad, but we're still talking about heavy hitters like Jared Friedman, co-founder of Scribd and Brewster Kahle, co-founder of InternetArchive.org. Actually, two great sites that I frequent regularly.

This is certain to be a great experience for me - I just hope that the listeners on over 350 radio stations across the nation will feel the same way. So, I'm hoping that some of you might throw some ideas, facts or figures my way so that we can work together and insure that the future is bright enough for us to read by. How can books (or bookstores) compete in a future that seems doomed to rely on extention cords? Why should books survive?

Sign Language

There's a lot going on inside of Green Apple and many ways to become disoriented or lost. Asking for help is always an option, as we've got some pretty special people to answer any questions, but there are also plenty of signs throughout the store hanging around hoping to help ya out...

Open everyday (minus, Christmas and Thanksgiving)

Maps (coming soon!) for navigation around the store:

It would be so kind, if you could:



We tell you where things are:



We tell you what to do:





And what not to do:



We help you save money:



We help you stay warm:



Sometimes we make mistakes:



And sometimes we have friends help make signs:



We can read forwards AND backwards:



Important people:



Hey! It's us! (2nd from the top):



See you next time:

Why I Read by Daniel Handler

Here's the sixth installment of our "Why I Read" series; today's essay comes from Daniel Handler, an early contributor when we started asking this question of authors a few years ago.

We'll get right to it, but I have to say how much we at Green Apple feel privileged to publish original work by these esteemed authors in our email newsletter (sign up here) and on our blog. I mean, Daniel Handler has sold tens of millions of copies of his many and varied books, he's a dad, he plays the accordion, and he has time to act (see below) and write original essays for Green Apple? Too cool.

Here's Daniel Handler's (2006) "Why I Read:"

When I was five it was Bartholomew and the Oobleck. When I was six it was Witches Witches Witches. When I was seven it was Ramona The Brave. When I was eight it was The Bears’ Famous Invasion Of Sicily. When I was nine it was The Headless Cupid. When I was ten it was The Last Battle. When I was eleven it was The Blue Aspic. When I was twelve it was Fish Preferred. When I was thirteen it was And Then There Were None. When I was fourteen it was Clock Without Hands. When I was fifteen it was Geography III. When I was sixteen it was the Alexandria Quartet. When I was seventeen it was Mrs. Caliban. When I was eighteen it was The Flounder. When I was nineteen it was City Of Glass. When I was twenty it was Anagrams. When I was twenty-one it was Lolita. When I was twenty-two it was Lolita again. When I was twenty-three it was Beloved. When I was twenty-four it was The Folded Leaf. When I was twenty-five it was the 27th City. When I was twenty-six it was The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. When I was twenty-seven it was Blindness. When I was twenty-eight it was The Black Brook. When I was twenty-nine it was 30. When I was thirty it was The Annunciation. When I was thirty-one it was The Faithful Narrative Of A Pastor’s Disappearance. When I was thirty-two it was The Long Goodbye. When I was thirty-three it was Why Did I Ever. When I was thirty-four it was Jackstraws. When I was thirty-five it was Seek. When I was thirty-six, so far, it’s The Unsettling.

Want more? Previous participants also include Beth Lisick, Susan Choi, Peter Rock, T.C. Boyle, and Dave Eggers. Why do you read?

Oh, and we can't resist showing this again:

GREEN APPLE EMPLOYEES ALLOWED FULL USE OF THE LANE

I ride my bike to work every day. I have no excuse not to. The weather too temperate in San Francisco, the scenery too attractive to squint at out of a filthy MUNI line window. Despite maniac motorists, streets in disrepair, ridiculous bike plan injunctions (thank you Rob Anderson), and that one time my landlord ran a stop sign and almost accidentally ran me over in his jeep (seriously), I ride my bike to work every day and I love it. I'm not the only one either. Green Apple boasts a staff with a sizable number of bicycle enthusiasts, not to mention a large selection of books on cycling, from repair to racing to world travel.

Above are just a few of our highly recommended selections, books we have here on display, books that we've read, loved, and been inspired to hop on our bikes and ride around by. I personally cannot push Major enough (Major Taylor also pictured up top), in which Todd Balf paints a grim picture of the cycling world long before the remote semblance of equality that exists today. David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries and Dervla Murphy's Full Tilt are enough to make a person want to abandon the rhetoric of modern society, take back their dignity and lean in to a pair of drop bars. Lastly Eve Titus' Anatole isn't specifically about bikes, though a bicycle is the titular character's prime form of transit. I mostly included it 'cause, gosh, how cute is that illustration? Keep chargin' Anatole, ya' little champ you!

Alfred Jarry, inventor of pseudoscience pataphysics and dada author of the Pere Ubu plays would famously ride nude though Paris with his face painted green in celebration of his birthdays.
Einstein enjoying what looks like a pretty playful ride to me... you'd think a genius level intellect would ride a bike that's a little closer to his size, but hey, he probably knows something I don't!

Henry Miller loved his bike so much he wrote a book about it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all.