A few mornings ago, Matthew Hein took a walk downtown and glanced upward toward all the condo towers.
“All these people need books,” Hein said.
On April 9, he and fellow book lover Anika Omark will open Hey Books! at 921 E St. in East Village, a roughly 1,000-square-foot space that will sell used and new books, host readings and other bookish events, and display and sell art on its bright walls.
As for the books: they will be a mix of fun, fascinating and hard to find secondhand titles, hot new releases, books for children and gifts for self or others.
“It might not be the book that you’re looking for, but the book next to that is the book you’ve been waiting for your whole life that you never even knew to look for,” said Omark on that same morning stroll.
For years, downtown San Diego has been a bookstore desert. The San Diego Central Library’s nonprofit charity shop is a few blocks away, and farther off is Street Smart Bookstore, tucked inside James Coffee Co.’s warehouse in Little Italy. (It is closed for now, as the building gets renovated.)
East Village also has a specialty store that sells comics. That’s it, Omark said.
“Downtown used to be a little mecca of used bookstores. There used to be several down here, and several years ago they all closed,” she added. “So we’re trying to bring a bookstore for everyone back to downtown.”
“Everyone” might include neighbors, people tracking down a specific title on a deadline, tourists and convention goers, or day-trippers from Temecula or Alpine waiting for a table at Tajima Ramen, next door, or Pokéz Mexican Restaurant, on the corner.
The idea had been a dream for a while, and when the space opened up a few months ago, they jumped on it.
Stepping into the future Hey Books!, where a small construction crew was at work, Hein described what will be: shelves here, chairs there, a mic here, readers everywhere.
“I hope that Hey Books! is a place where other people can make friends,” he said. “We have a space for people to talk to each other about books. And when you’re talking about books, you’re really talking about everything. You’re talking about what’s important to you. You’re talking about love, you’re talking about food, you’re talking about teeth, you’re talking about why we’re here.”
Omark always has a book in her tote bag — currently, a Paul Tremblay horror novel about a virus. Hein was wearing a The Paris Review baseball cap and carrying in his satchel “The Hatred of Poetry,” an essay collection by Ben Lerner. That was Wednesday. Ask again next week.
They also have a lot of experience reading and selling books. She grew up going to the bookshops on Fifth Avenue and Adams Avenue. Then she worked at Verbatim Books in North Park. In all, she’s been in the book business for more than 20 years. Hein worked at The Book Catapult in South Park, and before that, taught college English in Portland. In San Diego they became friends, now business partners.
According to both, this is a great time to open a bookstore in San Diego.
“I think it’s a better bet now, or that’s what I tell my mother,” Omark said.
Amazon may still be the silent, looming competition, but Omark said the pendulum is swinging back toward people over algorithms. Because readers don’t just want to read. They want to find other readers. They want to connect. They want recommendations from living and breathing booksellers, versus sifting through potentially fake reviews.
And they want to support independent bookstores, she added.
“I think during the pandemic, one of the things people realized is that people do want to support local (shops),” she said. “If you spend your money in the neighborhood, it stays in the neighborhood. It creates a neighborhood. If people don’t support local shops, then there won’t be any local shops.”
Address: 921 E Street
Open Wednesday through Sunday
Contact: hey@heybooksorelse.com
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