Almost 50 Northern California booksellers and their guests gathered last night, as we celebrated at this year’s annual ABAA Northern California Chapter (NCC) meeting/holiday party. The quarterly meeting of the NCC is a combined business meeting and social gathering, with this catered holiday dinner accompanied by a raffle to raise money for the Elisabeth Woodburn Educational Fund (in which the ABAA provides financial support for scholarly research and education relevant to the antiquarian book trade – for scholarships to book schools such as CABS, CalRBS and RBS – click here to learn more). The venue was the Berkeley City Club, a beautiful 1929 building designed by the noted California architect Julia Morgan. It now plays host to visitors to the East Bay, as well as straggler antiquarian booksellers looking for good food, good wine and book talk!
A full house! (Why so serious, M.H.?)
Reflecting the chapters’ geographical diversity, the evening’s participants hailed from all over Northern California, including the central valley, Sonoma county, Marin county, San Francisco and even Monterey. The quarterly meetings of the ABAA NCC chapter are a fantastic chance for collegiality, conviviality and meeting up with like-minded bibliophiles, and yesterday evening was no exception!
The gathering got underway around 6-ish, with drinks and socializing, and an hour later the staff began serving, as Michael Hackenberg, our NCC Chair, kicked off the business portion of the night.
TavBooks’ Vic Zoschak giving the Board of Governor’s report.
As is custom, the first order of business was to introduce any and all guests in attendance (of which Tavistock Books was responsible for a very modest 10 people…), and then the Treasurer/Secretary report, the Board of Governors report (given by our very own Vic Zoschak), followed by a good amount of updates on the upcoming 48th California International Antiquarian Book Fair, to be held in Oakland this coming February 2015. The number of exhibitors is gaining on 190, the event is being highly publicized, and hopefully the new location in the East Bay will be able to draw even more visitors, due to its more central location and easier access to all of Northern California. The ABAA fair Poker Tournament was discussed, with Bibliopolis recently joining Michals Insurance as the event’s primary sponsors. Given the success of the tournament held last February in Pasadena, we are hopeful of raising similar sums for the Woodburn Fund this coming February!
The night flew by as a lovely meal had been consumed, many glasses of wine drunk, a few dozen items raffled, and $1,200 raised for the Woodburn fund. As this holiday season continues its course, we’re happy to report the NCC ABAA started out its holiday season with a warmth & generosity we hope others will match.
Happy Holidays to all from Tavistock Books!
