Dog Eared Books is on Valencia Street in the Mission — the street that has been San Francisco's independent bookshop corridor for the past thirty years. The shop has the character that Valencia Street formerly had before the neighbourhood's economic transformation: a densely stocked room with a handwritten quality to its selection, poster art on the walls, a back section that rewards unhurried browsing. The stock runs to literary fiction, poetry, and political and cultural writing; the small press section is particularly good. Dog Eared has been on Valencia since 1992 and carries itself accordingly — as a shop that has its own opinion about what a bookshop should be, and has been right about it for long enough not to need to explain it.
Mission District, San Francisco, United States