Green Apple Books, a singular store, celebrates 50th anniversary

Browsing during the lunch hour at Green Apple Books on Tuesday, August 29, 2017, in San Francisco, Calif. Green Apple Books will soon celebrate its 50th year as a local bookstore. Browsing during the lunch hour at Green Apple Books on Tuesday, August 29, 2017, in San Francisco, Calif. Green Apple Books will soon celebrate its 50th year as a local bookstore. Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Green Apple Books, a singular store, celebrates 50th anniversary 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

If there’s any indication that portents of the death of print are and have always been misguided, it could be easily seen in the history of places like San Francisco’s Green Apple Books. And if there’s any indication that bookstores nevertheless continue teetering at the edge of survival — well, look again at Green Apple.

On Wednesday, Sept. 6, Green Apple Books will celebrate its 50th year in operation with an Anniversary Jubilee of live music and reading with special guests at the Great American Music Hall. In 1967, Richard Savoy opened the 750-square-foot storefront on Clement Street as an evening-only bookstore, then just a physical and symbolic fraction of the San Francisco institution it has become.

Now co-owned by three longtime Green Apple employees — Kevin Hunsanger, Kevin Ryan and Pete Mulvihill — whom Savoy chose for a gradual buyout, the store is now much larger, occupying two stories and even boasting a sister store in the Sunset District, Green Apple Books on the Park.

The original bookstore, which was named Publishers Weekly’s “Bookstore of the Year” in 2014, has seen it all — marriage proposals, death, even a surreptitiously recorded intro to an adult-rated video. After half a century, operating “12 hours a day, seven days a week, 362 days of a year — that’s just a lot of human experience packed in the store,” Mulvihill says. “Basically everything that can happen has happened.”

Famous writers, celebrities and far-flung figures (cult leader Jim Jones, satanist Anton LaVey) have entered, often returning for consecutive days to quietly binge on the store’s bountiful selection of new and used books.

Mulvihill recalls working the night shift years ago when he saw Robin Williams, who was a regular, browsing in the store. “A customer came up and said, ‘Is that who I think it is?’ And I said, ‘Yeah,’” Mulvihill recalls. “They said, ‘You think I could say hi?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, you know, keep it brief. He likes his privacy.’ And they walk up to the person next to Robin Williams and say, ‘Dr. Sacks! I love everything you’ve ever written.’ It was Oliver Sacks.”

In another Williams instance, Ryan remembers author Dave Eggers spotting the late comedian inside the store and asking, “‘Is that Robin Williams over there?’ And apparently Williams said to the guy at the counter, ‘Is that Dave Eggers over there?’”

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle Above: Mullane Ahern of San Francisco looks at gift items. Top: The...

The two wound up talking for nearly an hour outside the store.

But despite its mythos (or perhaps the reason its mythos came to be), Green Apple carries itself as a quiet, old lived-in shop supported and built by average readers. Inside, the wooden floors creak, handwritten notes are taped beneath staff book picks, and two retro schoolroom desks sit in the philosophy section. A large row of brown paper bags line a wall, brought in by a seller and filled with stacks of obscure, well-worn books.

Just like any bookstore, Green Apple has battled economic anxieties following the changing shape of San Francisco and, with the rise of technological shifts, the last decade’s upheaval of the bookselling industry. The store’s surrounding block used to house other bookstores, all of which have gone under.

“One of the reasons we’re still around all these years, and something that I think differentiates us from other stores, is that we’re willing to change, adapt, shift,” Mulvihill says.

The owners are constantly evaluating what works and what doesn’t. The store’s collection of LPs once ballooned, shrank, then grew again. Fidget spinners are sold alongside classics of literature in hardback or as e-books and audiobooks.

“The whole idea that people are going to stop reading printed books, and that was a fear five years ago, that’s leveled off,” Ryan says. “People like print books. The question is, how can you compete with this behemoth, the largest company in the world that’s selling things cheaper than you are.”

The behemoth in question, of course, is Amazon.

“I’m not going to belittle the threat of Amazon (to) not just bookstores, but to independent businesses in every neighborhood in America,” says Hunsanger. “It’s devastating. And it’s going to be devastating.”

Bookstores, Mulvihill says, were the “canaries in the coal mine” — the first ones to face this takeover that eventually spread to hardware stores, bike shops and now, retail as a whole.

Green Apple has survived, partially as a result of its reputation as a destination bookstore, and even expanded, if only as a “defensive move” rather than out of financial excess. But the threat of extinction, after 50 years and national fame, is as strong as ever. Pressed on the idea of the future, Hunsanger emits a groan. As Amazon loops back around with physical bookstores, the next two or three years for the store might determine the possibility of the next 20.

“The reason we’re still here and the thing we have going for us is the people of San Francisco,” Ryan says. “They support us. Every single person who comes here knows they can get the book cheaper if they want to wait a day or two. But they choose to get it here for many, many reasons.”

A few years earlier, a group of MBA students used the store as a graduate project, attempting to determine what maintained Green Apple’s perhaps anomalous survival. Their assessment came with a few reasons: a connection to community, the duty to shop locally, the promise of discovering unique finds in a bookstore.

“And the last one, which kind of surprised me, was beauty,” Mulvihill says — in the creak of the stairs, the wooden shelves, the “visual cacophony” of the physical space. “You couldn’t replace it.”

Brandon Yu is a Bay Area freelance writer.

Green Apple Books: 50th Anniversary Jubilee. 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 6. $25. Great American Music Hall. 859 O’Farrell St, S.F. (415) 387-2272. www.greenapplebooks.com