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I have great memories in the downtown Border's Books, reading through the stacks in the ornate former theater. Sadly, it's now a Blue Bottle cafe (not bad) and a coworking space (horrible) with corporate offices upstairs (sigh).

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Used to love visiting two places on my yearly visits to Silicon Valley. One was the Computer Literacy bookstore and the other was Fry's computer store. Always spent money at both on each visit. Neither Detroit or Chicago had anything to compare to them.

The closing of that Borders was a tragic loss and the end of an era in Palo Alto.

The opening of that Borders was a tragic loss of an art house theatre (the New Varsity) and the arrival of a corporate behemoth that drove most of the rest of the bookshops (one next door!) out of business.

The permit for that building required that it be possible to turn it back into a live/film theatre. A friend of mine and I looked into turning it into a nightclub but in the end it was too much of a hassle (and Palo Alto is no longer the kind of place that has nightclubs and porno theatres (not the New Varsity!) downtown).

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