Of bookstores, graphics...bright colors, heavy machinery

Once again I have tangled with the graphic elements and ... well, it's like trying to hold an inflated balloon under water for me. I love the bright colors, but if there had been heavy machinery involved someone might really have got hurt.

I had meant to use a nifty little widget software thing Amazon offered to put pictures and info on a web page. However before posting anything with the Amazon site logo, I wanted to acknowledge that some people I know and respect deeply feel that the online giant has something major to do with the breaking the hearts and destroying the businesses of independent book dealers we have all known and loved. I don't totally agree with that viewpoint. True, I have known booksellers whose dreams were crushed. However, small bookstores are fragile things, and Amazon is one of many hazards. I also know people who wouldn't buy books at all if they didn't buy them online, and they buy through Amazon and don't go to physical bookstores.

Anyway, enough foot-shuffling. I'd meant to put up at least a partial list of Independent Bookstore I know and love to sit next to the Amazon widget thingie, but it slipped away from me and got posted before I could do that. So I'm doing it now.
I'll try to put it in the sidebar thingie to stay on the template, but just so it doesn't get lost:

Green Apple Books is a bookstore I haunted from my college years—the used books were
the reason
Green Apple Books

A true San Francisco Institution—and a mystery booklover’s Bermuda Triangle
SF Mystery Books

Staceys, a store that helped me survive working in the SF Financial District!
Staceys

Another wealth of books in downtown SF
Alexander Book Company
Alexander Books

A little further south on the SF Peninsula in San Mateo is the amazing M Is for Mystery bookstore
M Is for Mystery

for the record:

October 5, 1977 I read:

The Main, Trevanian

October 5, 2007
I saw the great French-language film The Visitors on DVD.

DVDs did not exist in 1977 by the way!

Normal entry to follow in another day or so! Whew!