ABC Book & Comic Emporium at Broadway and Granville is packed from floor to ceiling with about 100,000 books and comics, but soon the store will be empty. On Nov. 30, after 65 years in business, Vancouver’s oldest used bookstore will shut its doors for the last time.
Owner Louis “Skip” Mabee, 68, tall and lanky with greying hair, gracefully weaves through the customers as he stocks books. Sales have increased since word spread about the closure, which has allowed Mabee to go on book-buying trips to the U.S.
“I just went to Seattle a few weeks ago and bought 2,000 books, which people say, ‘Why? You’re closing, you’ve got to get rid of everything,’ ” he says.
“But it’s the fiction that I’m still selling a lot of. Everybody wants The Hunger Games or A Game of Thrones.”
Mabee estimates that sales have doubled since he announced the closure. Actually, if it had always been this busy, he wouldn’t have to close now.
Part of Vancouver’s history, the store opened in 1946, as Ted Fraser’s Book Bin at 1247 Granville at Davie. The original location was 6,000 square feet on two floors and one of the largest used bookstores in Western Canada. In 1963, Fraser and his manager, Eiran Harris, were charged with “possession of obscene material for the purpose of publication, distribution or circulation” when police seized several naughty titles, such as Whip Some More My Lady and Sin Teacher. They appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, but were eventually convicted and fined $3,400.
The store changed names, and hands, a few times before Mabee bought the business in 1988.
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It was doing well until ABC had to move from its original location – the building was slated for demolition and ABC moved across the street. In 2007, Mabee had to move the store yet again. He noticed thousands boarding the 98 and 99 B-Line buses at the corner of Broadway and Granville and thought the foot traffic warranted the $9,000 monthly rent. “It was a busy intersection, but it took me about two years to get back to the level where it was. That’s when TransLink took off the 98 B-Line.” He’s been losing money ever since.
Amid the going out of business signs on the storefront is one handwritten sign: “Not buying this month. Trade only.” Exceptions to the rule are made for binners who supplement their income by selling used books. So when William McElroy comes in with his stack of books, magazines, and DVDs, he is offered $25 in trade or $12.50 in cash. He opts for the cash. As a binner, McElroy’s been collecting books along his bottle run for more than 10 years. He trades with ABC because it offers “a fair price every time.” Like everyone else, McElroy is sad to see ABC closing.
“Almost everybody related to the store is dreading the fact that it’s going to close,” Mabee says.
Manager Gavin Lee, 48, has spent two-thirds of his life working at ABC, having got a job there when he was just 18. “He really doesn’t know anything else,” Mabee says. But Lee sure knows books. “Gavin would read all the blurbs on the books and people would come in and say, ‘Yeah, I don’t know the title or the author, but a lady in a red skirt is being chased by a man … …’ and Gavin would say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s such and such.’ ”
One customer has been spending his days at ABC for 32 years, doing odd jobs around the store in exchange for borrowing books, even helping to lift the bargain bins outside for Mary Ballard – an employee of 25 years with an injured back.
She laughs when he calls her the mother of the store. “Mother Hen more like it! With staff, we’ve all been together long enough to be a great dysfunctional family,” Ballard says.
ABC’s extended family includes its customers. Lana Williams arrives to stock up on Dr. Who books before ABC shuts its doors. It’s the only Vancouver bookstore that carries them, so once ABC is gone, Williams says she’ll have to look for her books online where, as collector items, they cost a lot more. She doesn’t know what she’ll do then.
Mabee, too, isn’t exactly sure what life will look like after the store closes. He says retirement isn’t an option.
“No, I’m gonna have to get a job to pay off my debts.”
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