News comes that Cody's Bookstore in Berkeley has given up the final ghost, and is no more. 

Frances Dinkelspiel writes:

This is the store that has hosted many of the world's most beloved authors, who continued to sell the Satanic Verses even after it had been firebombed, who patched up protesters who had been beaten by police in the protests at UC Berkeley in the 1960s, and much more.

Sitting in London, 5,000 miles away from Cody’s, I will observe my own minute of silence for this bookstore that has played such an important role in the literary world.

The report at Cody's website is no less heartbreaking: 

After 52 years, Cody's Books will shut its doors effective June 20, 2008. The Berkeley bookstore has been a beacon to readers and writers throughout the nation and across the world. Founded by Fred and Pat Cody in 1956, Cody's has been a Berkeley institution and a pioneer in the book business, helping to establish such innovations as quality paperbacks and in-store author readings. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Cody's was a landmark of the Free Speech movement and was a home away from home for innumerable authors, poets and readers.

The Board of Directors of Cody's Books made this difficult decision after years of financial distress and declining sales.
...

Cody's would like to thank all of our loyal customers for their years of patronage. 

Independently, famed Bay Area music store Down Home Records, an independent offshoot of the Arhoolie record  label (part of whose backlist, the Frontera collection, is being digitized with the UCLA Libraries and UCLA Chicano Studies Center), is closing its store on the 4th Street corridor in Berkeley, and its original store in El Cerrito is evidently struggling to survive.

We are losing a lot here; this is something way beyond a mere shift in content retailing and distribution; this is a loss of expertise, curation, depth, a love for creativity, and the freedom and diversity of expression.  These things will not be made up in a virtual space; there is something about gathering in the presence of others, and the random delight of sharing, that is in danger of being gone in our era. 

While a corrupt and authoritarian government can easily silence a website, it is harder to silence the voices of people speaking in protest together, as a community.  Tear gas and spilt blood leave sidewalk traces that unresolvable urls cannot; acts of protest are borne from our culture, our understanding of our past, and our ability to gather.  The physical is the root of the virtual; the great good place makes online protest meaningful. 

We have done a very poor job of marrying the strengths of our digital world with what we must, most care about in the physical.