There were several French restaurants in the neighborhood where I was staying, and it looked like it must been a historic center for French immigrants, so I had been well aware that Bastille Day was coming up all week. That evening, in spite of the news, there was a block party in celebration of the holiday and balloons in the trois couleurs. I had an early dinner with coworkers at an Italian small plates restaurant that gave us pizza, and dungeness crab dumplings, and green vegetables with burrata on slices of bread, but I needed to cheer myself up so I climbed on a streetcar to explore the city. I ended up in the Castro, where obviously the first thing I wanted to do was visit the new bookstore. They had a thoughtful and eclectic selection of books, such as a special illustrated edition of the little-known Herman Melville novel Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, as well as the books you would expect to find in the neighborhood, like the works of Armisted Maupin and Randy Shilts. They just opened a month ago and seem to be relying on foot traffic to stay afloat, and I saw quite a lot of young people wandering into the bookstore late at night, which made me feel hopeful.

(Photo: Castro Street, San Francisco.)

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