Cabin Fever, Coffee Shops, and Bookstores

I don’t do well when I spend too much time in the same place. Borrowing from some ancient pioneer lingo, I refer to this condition as cabin fever, and I attribute it to my need for intensity and change: I like my coffee super strong (too strong for most folks), I prefer desserts that involve intensely deep, dark, rich chocolate (too rich for most folks), in my running days, I had to run a marathon for it to “count,” and I like my life to involve change, all the time. That means a day spent indoors in the same place turns deadly long before night falls. Cabin fever. 


Usually, I plan things that get me out of the house each day: errands, volunteer work, a walk or the gym, lunch with a friend. But some days, that’s not enough to settle my itchy nerves. For those days, I've lately discovered the healing power of hanging out in coffee shops. It’s especially helpful now that the weather is nice and I can sit outside for the cure. This means packing up my work or some leisure reading and trundling off to someplace with tables and an Internet connection for an hour or two of cabin-fever therapy.

My favorite spots are locally owned coffee shops: Paul’s, Vic’s, Folsom Street, Ozo’s. Recently, since Starbucks took a courageous position on behalf of LGBT rights, which earned them a boycott by conservative groups, I've added that to my list. And then there are always bookstore coffee shops, which have the added value of great atmosphere and opportunities to browse for more stuff to read. Not Barnes & Noble, which is far from “locally owned,” and which has not, to my knowledge, taken any risky political positions.

And this leads me to an entirely tangential topic … bookstores and their discontents.

Thinking about bookstore coffee shops brings to mind the dilemma that bookstores—especially independent, locally owned bookstores—are facing these days. Brick-and-mortar bookstores have struggled to survive in this Internet age, with behemoths like Amazon for competition. The big national chains have probably done best—although Borders recently bit the dust, leaving B & N as the remaining chain mega-bookstore with enough volume and enough advertising clout to slash prices and get folks through the door. But independent bookstores have fallen like flies.

When we first moved back to Boulder about 6 years ago, I volunteered for a while at Boulder’s locally owned combination women’s and LGBT bookstore, “Word Is Out.” The store closed in 2008 (although it’s now “open” online), victim of the trends that are closing independent bookstores, especially specialty stores, all over the country. In their heyday, women’s bookstores doubled as community centers for the burgeoning feminist and LGBT movements. They were the go-to source for the books, fiction and non-fiction, that fueled the movements. They were also the site of political meetings, book signings, teach-ins, informational sessions, consciousness-raising groups, and just plain hanging out together, building community.  

When these movements began to make some real gains, folks developed other community sites, new centers of activities and resources, and the movements shifted outward from the bookstores. With them went many of the events that had nourished these gathering places, and the shops increasingly became “just” bookstores. Over time, even these have become more and more scarce. These trends overlapped with the decline of independent bookstores in general, with results like we saw with the closing  of “Word is Out.”

It’s not as simple as good vs. evil, of course. There’s lots of talk about what’s lost when we buy books online instead of meandering through rows of shelves and about how meager is the expertise and how poor the service in megastores. But on the other hand, there’s also something to be said for the value of online access to a wide range of books for folks who otherwise wouldn’t have access to books at all—think of rural folks, people who are isolated for medical reasons, older folks who can’t get out, youths who could never get a ride to a queer bookstore. And megastores do make books more affordable than indie stores can.

Also, some folks—including some owners of independent bookstores—argue that indie bookstores are making a comeback, partly by becoming “community centers,” sort of like women’s bookstores used to be. We are lucky in Boulder to still have some independent bookstores, Boulder Bookstore and Left Hand Books best known among them. Conveniently, Boulder Bookstore is also adjacent to the Bookends coffee shop, so that solves my dilemma about finding a coffee shop in an independent bookstore. In Denver, the Tattered Cover thrives, and it also has coffee shops in all its branches. So I have a hangout in Denver, if I have reason to be down there.

That whole digression—from cabin fever to coffee shops to bookstores—finally brings me back to my original point. Coffee shops, especially when attached to bookstores, are a great antidote for cabin fever. If, that is, you are (a) prone to cabin fever and (b) lucky enough to be retired so you can go hang out at a bookstore coffee shop to treat it.