This town needs a bookstore
When my family and I relocated from Beijing, China, to Sammamish in 2015, we knew things would be a tad different. A local friend warned me, “Sammamish has great schools, lots of parks and churches, and not much else.” His description is as apt today as it was a decade ago. Heck, Sammamish has even more parks now, and fewer pet stores, than it did back then.
In his book American Gods, English novelist Neil Gaiman wrote, “What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
This sums up my sense of Sammamish — it feels like a community without an identity. A bookstore isn’t the only thing our town needs, but it would go a long way towards filling a void in the heart of our community.
I grew up in Ashland, Oregon, a small town with a third of the population of Sammamish. Yet that little community supported a handful of new and used bookstores. Sure, times have changed, and many blame the demise of bookstores on the rise of online booksellers like Amazon. Yet, my hometown still supports five thriving book vendors today. So why can’t we have one in Sammamish?
Multiple bookstores have opened in Issaquah and Redmond since we took up residence here a decade ago, including Brick & Mortar Books in Redmond Town Center, quite possibly the best little bookstore on the Eastside. So clearly bookstores can thrive even in Amazon’s own backyard.
Why does a bookstore matter? Why does any store in a town matter? What a town supports identifies something about the people who live there and what they value. I know for a fact that Sammamishers appreciate food. Well, groceries at least. True, we do have a few restaurants, but not many for a population of our size. But within about a mile of my home, I can walk to five grocery stores. There are three in the Sammamish Highlands shopping center alone (Safeway, Trader Joe’s, Apna Bazar). Yet we have no theaters, museums, independent coffee shops, art galleries, clothing stores, bike shops or bookstores. Don’t we at least deserve a bookstore?
Maybe Sammamishonians are not a very literary bunch? If that were true, I don’t think the Sammamish branch of the King County Library would be so busy at all hours of the day. At times, it is a challenge to even find a parking spot. If anything, the success of the library bodes well for a bookshop to succeed here.
But without a bookstore, what is one to do? Like so many other needs, Sammamishites must either order online, use DoorDash, or drive to Issaquah, Redmond or even Bellevue to make a purchase. I have friends around Puget Sound, but they never call to tell me they are having an outing in Sammamish. What would draw them here?
True, we have lovely parks, but the region is full of those, so that does not differentiate our community. Yes, our Trader Joe’s is quaint, but what else do we have to offer? I’ve got to drive to Issaquah just a get a decent taco. And unless you want to buy a T-shirt or yoga pants from a workout studio, you can’t buy a stitch of clothing in this community of 67,000 people. Last time I checked, we were all wearing clothes, but not everyone can pull off wearing yoga pants.
Come to think of it, The Friends of the Sammamish Library do have a tiny bookstore just inside the Sammamish Library that sells gently used second-hand books, DVDs and CDs. Perhaps if all Sammamishians visit the Friends of the Library bookshop and purchase all the books, it will spur one of these friends to open a full-fledged bookstore; preferably with an adjacent independent coffee shop where I could buy an expertly crafted cappuccino. I’d be the first in line.
Meanwhile, I encourage everyone to frequent our fledgling bookshop in the library. After all, it is the only bookstore in town, and you can’t beat the prices.
