I stopped by Black Oak Books today in Berkeley; after a transfer of owners, it was temporarily closed, but the doors were thrown open for remodeling: a good sign.  Lord knows who owns it now, but there seemed a healthy crew of reasonably young hipsters giving it paint and dosing it with cleanliness.  Good. May you be blessed.  

I was there looking for a book by Vernor Vinge that I had seen on their stacks; I wanted to give it to my brother in law, who enjoys science fiction.  Presently he's in a ward at Stanford Hospital awaiting treatment for a terminal high grade brain tumor.  (Btw, may I make a digression - Books / Kindles / Cell phones.  Hospitals, ICUs don't permit cell phones.  Are Kindles disallowed?  ?Where are the signs: No Kindles or cell phones permitted."  As our devices become more multipurpose, what will happen to these capricious restrictions that are not trusted by those of us who use electronics as extensions of our bodies 18 hours of the day?) 

Anyway, closed book store, no book, deferred purchase.  Since I am walking around wanting to scream in pain right now, and managed to get Annie Lennox's Broken Glass into my head, I walked from campus down to Rasputin to see if they had a copy of Diva.  (A second digression: AnnieLennox has posted her own music videos on YouTube.  Rock, babe, rock.  She gets it.)  Rasputin: used and new CDs, DVDs, posters, and all things music.  Hard to explain if you haven't been there; it's been a mecca on Telegraph equal in stature to the late Cody's for generations.  Not exhaustive - it's not a Library of Congress for music.  It has what it has, and what it has is eclectic.  It's like a weird community library.  Anyway, five copies of Diva.  Check.  

And ... I was curious who was there.  Young and old, everyone flipping through the racks.  Not crowded, but reasonably busy, and all ages.  And that struck me, because coincidentally, walking across the campus today, I kept rambling across tours of Berkeley's new incoming students: they looked very young, many were Asian, some were white; their skin was glassine smooth, they looked eager and excited and basically happy: they were beautiful, and beautiful to see.  A few (not many but a few) of those people were here, in Rasputin's.  

And of course these people will read paper books.  But when they think of "a book" - (whatever the hell that will be) - when they read, they'll read by default on screen, and on mobile devices, and on subway walls, and generally whereever they happen to encounter text video pictures.  We oldsters get so hung up on the what.  Like, it doesn't really matter that much, because we'll be reading off the screen of our fricking fridge.  The channel matters: the fridge news might be brought to us by Amazon.  Or Google.  Or Murdoch.  But the news, it will be everywhere. 

And this generation will be constantly making stuff, because we / they have the tools to do it; damn it, I can now do video editing on my cell phone.  It is not blockbuster, that's not the point; it is how I share / they share with my friends / their friends, and we all help make our worlds (even as much of it is owned by the others, Greetings: Media Empires ... NBC/ ABC/ CBS and the people who own you).  It is less about the product, and more about the experience.  The media is part of the experience, and the message will give a shit about the media. 

And printed books are like DVDs: there's a class of music available on them, a series of generations of music, and DVDs are worth having and preserving for that.  As a compilation of music, the DVD and its successors might even retain some value for breakthrough or new artists.  Well, WTF.  Who could know.  DVDs will continue to be swapped, and there will continue to be used book stores like Black Oak, and young urban hipsters with henna 'toos (OH at Black Oak: "I'm not really a suburban kid, I really like cities") will be making these stores happen, and re-inventing them in their own image.  

This world, this new world, is not filled with corduroy jackets with leather elbows.   Unless that becomes a retro chic, and then it will be a fun.  Cords and Retired Goths.  Dude.  Welcome to my BookStore.