Farewell to the Riverdale Bookshop
Twenty-one minutes ago, a very pleasant era of my life came to an end. The Riverdale Bookshop and Coffee Depot has closed its doors.

I first visited the Bookshop within a week or so of when it started selling coffee, and promised Simon on my first visit that I would be a regular customer. We got of to an bad start: he grinched me out for leaning against the antique love seat on one of my first visits. My ever-thickening skin survived, though, and he made good espresso, so I was hooked. (I never leaned on the love seat again, either).

I lived up to my promise to be a regular customer. I was there almost every weekday they were open for the first seven years they were open. Simon knew my regular drink - quad skim latte, iced in the summer, hot in the winter. When I was in a big hurry, I would call him on my way out the door (or the way there) and simply say “Coffee commando!”, to which he would reply “Coffee supply!”, and everything would be ready to pour into my travel mug when I walked through the door. After Justin arrived, I would have lunch with Simon at the bookshop almost every Friday (my day home with the kids). We could both predict what the other would order from the various take-out or delivery places we got food from. Today, our last lunch at the bookshop, I brought in Popeye’s. Three piece dinner, spicy, all dark meat, side of beans and rice. The usual.

The magic of the bookshop was not just Audrey and Simon, but the other customers as well. I look at a group photo of “the regulars” from a few years ago, and think of what wonderful people they all are or were (some, sadly, have passed on). There are many people who I fear I won’t see again, now that the bookshop has closed, and others I know I won’t see as often. My social network has been crippled; one of the special benefits of living in Riverdale Park has gone away.

Over the years, as I built up an outrageous number of Coffee Club Cards (22 full cards today, and I haven’t punched a hole in the last three years), Simon and Audrey became not just the proprietors, but friends. They were the first non-family to see baby Justin, and are people I always know will be there in a pinch. I’ve tried to be there in pinches for them, and will help them with the final move out this weekend. I know our friendship will continue; it will just be more difficult to get together now. Hey, Simon, are you up for lunch next week?

With the closing of the bookshop, the world has become a little more dreary, a little colder, a little less interesting. The magic goes away. I feel like a close friend has moved across the country, never to return. I will miss the bookshop.

A lot.

“History is an angel being blown backwards into the future

History is a pile of debris

And the angel wants to go back and fix things

To repair the things that have been broken

But there is a storm blowing from Paradise

And the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future

And this storm, this storm is called Progress”

- Laurie Anderson, The Dream Before

- posted by Alan K. Thompson @ 6:21 PM