The Banquet Room of the Solano Grill & Bar in Albany, California.
The Solano Grill & Bar, on Solano Avenue in Albany, is now used to hordes of booksellers crowding their bar area and taking up the entire top floor for their quarterly meeting. A great gathering of ABAA booksellers and their guests, it gives booksellers a chance to talk about business, upcoming & past fairs, and share recent anecdotes about the goings-on in the antiquarian book trade.
Beginning with cocktail hour starting at 6pm (which is great, unless you are stuck in rush hour traffic near Emeryville and happen to be 40 minutes late to cocktail hour), booksellers eventually take their seats in the Banquet Room (good & liquored up, at this point), and the meeting begins. The food is more than acceptable at Solano, especially given the sheer number of orders they are passing out to one (rather large) table. After salad and entrees (of which the booksellers could choose, in advance, from 4 options), Michael Hackenberg, Steve Blackmer, John Windle and our own Vic Zoschak took the stage to discuss recent booktrade events. First there was the introduction of guests (of which Tavistock Books, as always, had a healthy helping – Kim Herrick of The Book Lair, Zhenya Dzhavgova of ZH Books, Andy Langer Bookseller, and, of course, me), and then Chair of the NCC Michael Hackenberg took the stage. Over the course of the evening Mr. Hackenberg discussed the recent Oakland fair (and the exciting news that we turned a profit at such, despite being 10% down in the exhibitor category) and showed us a memento that will be sent to Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf as a thank you for attending opening night of the Oakland ABAA fair this past February. Hackenberg also discussed the upcoming NCC Scholarship for educational opportunities for Northern California booksellers, where a lucky nominee will win tuition to a Rare Book course of their choosing (be is RBS, CalRBS or CABS).
Steve Blackmer, treasurer of the NCC, and owner of Chanticleer Books, stated the chapter’s solvent status (yay!), and John Windle (John Windle Antiquarian Bookseller) made a few headline announcements! Rachel Eley (of John Windle Antiquarian Bookseller) has given birth to a healthy baby boy (a future bookseller, hopefully!), and also has recently been made an Associate Member of the ABAA. Windle also proudly announced the great news that his Tour-de-Force wife Chris Loker, curator of the recent Grolier Exhibition “One Hundred Books Famous in Childrens’ Literature”, has now sold out of the printed catalogue of the exhibition after only a short 4 months! Vic, as Vice Chair and chapter representative to the ABAA board, then advised the chapter that the minutes were out and available on the website, that RBMS (the Rare Book & Manuscript Society conference) will be in June and held in Oakland at the Marriott Convention Center (the same as was used recently for the Oakland fair), and therefore holds a possible sponsorship opportunity for the chapter. Also, Vic spoke of the current ABAA investigation of a possible educational opportunity for RBS that hopefully we will be able to hear more of in the coming months.
As the dinner came to a close and all of us booksellers returned to our caves (just kidding… I sleep in a display case), another get-together had come and gone in the blink of an eye. Luckily, however, booksellers get together somewhat often, as book fairs and events are spread out throughout the year. Next up: the Sacramento Antiquarian Book Fair on Saturday, March 28th! Come out and support your local booksellers!
