It’s been called the Rodeo Drive of the Northeast. Local stores like Allston Beat lie a stone’s throw away from national chains like the Gap in the heart of the city, just a T stop away from Boston University. But Newbury Street, one of Boston’s prime shopping areas, may be losing some of its unique flavor.
The Avenue Victor Hugo Bookstore, a mainstay on 339 Newbury Street for 27 years, is preparing to shut its doors for good this month. Nearly everything in the store is on sale to reduce inventory for the store’s move to a new location. The current location is closing because it can no longer pay rents that have increased due to property tax hikes, according to storeowner Vincent McCaffrey.
‘The rent of the stores [in Boston] is being determined by politicians,’ McCaffrey said. ‘It’s private property you’d think owners could charge whatever they want. But they can’t do that and maintain the property and pay taxes.
‘It’s about how to get political favors, who do you pay off,’ McCaffrey said. ‘Those of us who have no money to pay [Mayor Thomas] Menino off with … have to pay the price.’
McCaffrey also has to deal with competition from larger stores such as Barnes ‘ Noble, which are able to buy their material and merchandise at bulk discounts, he said.
‘Barnes ‘ Noble can buy their books at a 60 percent discount, but I have to buy them at 40 percent,’ he said. ‘Even their health insurance is cheaper.’
But Avenue Victor Hugo is a different type of store than Barnes ‘ Noble. Vintage magazines and postcards lead into the cashier’s booth as stacks of nonfiction books augmented by helpfully labeled ladders stretch to the ceiling and the back of the store. The second floor contains fiction of all kinds ancient science fiction at the top of the landing, mysteries jostling for space with horror, juvenile novels merging with oat operas and historical novels, and winding walls of just plain books. Quiet jazz permeates the rooms, many of which contain browsers tucked away in corners as they peruse their latest finds. The whole store has the aura of Borges’ Library of Babel – the expanse of books seems infinite, if not necessarily incomprehensible.
McCaffrey said the store’s ‘browsing aesthetic’ has retained many customers over the years. However, he said, the majority of customers want ‘Oprah or New York Times bestsellers, only cheaper.’
The store was created with the ‘mindset of the ’60s,’ McCaffrey said. In the early 70s, the store published various literary magazines and a libertarian handbook.
‘The store had a fully idealistic beginning, maybe an unrealistic birth in the financial part,’ McCaffrey recalled. ‘But we worked hard and tried to make up in sweat equity.’
Avenue Victor Hugo runs on a much different scale than other stores, according to McCaffrey. While most bookstores sell new merchandise in three months, McCaffrey said his store usually takes up to three years to sell a book.
‘Other bookstores mark books down constantly, which basically makes the books a commodity,’ McCaffrey said. ‘We try to place the importance on what we’re selling.
‘It’s very easy to get into a situation where you’re geared toward the bottom line dollar,’ he said. ‘For used booksellers on the Internet, competition is extremely rough. You spend all the time processing books, doing data entry, shipping … it results in not being a bookseller, but a processor. That’s not what we were about then or now.’
The Avenue Victor Hugo is online, but does business much differently than other booksellers, McCaffrey said. And according to a press release, the store has lost nearly a third of its business to other Internet booksellers in the past three years. However, Mars Records, located a block east of the bookstore on Newbury Street, uses the Internet frequently, according to manager Andre Delbos.
‘The Internet is available to us as a retail source,’ Delbos said. ‘There was talk a few years ago about the Internet hurting record companies and retailers, but I had this theory that has proven itself about the tactile quality of possessing real legit CDs, although mp3s are great as well.’
Mars uses the Internet to order rare music unavailable elsewhere, Delbos said. The store tries to have a large selection of unusual and used music to fit in among the various other music stores on the street.
‘It’s a challenge to find an area that’s not being filled by chain stores,’ Delbos said. ‘If the public perception of our store is that we have strange music, we’ve succeeded.’
That perception is easily reinforced when walking into Mars. Fuzz-toned garage rock gives way to disjointed tribal beats topped with oscillating screams. The rock and jazz section in the center of the main room is surrounded by a horseshoe of CDs along the wall ranging from avant-garde to indie rock to ’70s punk and hardcore. A short hallway past the register contains a magazine and fashion area and empties into a cul-de-sac of vinyl albums, many of which have not been – and never will be – released on CD.
The store’s intimacy and selectivity leads to lasting relationships with customers, according to Delbos.
‘You see people frequently and get to know them and how their tastes run in a certain direction,’ he said. ‘It’s very satisfying to say ‘I saw this and thought of you.”
The rare books and first editions of Avenue Victor Hugo also draw in a steady stream of customers, according to Assistant Manager Tom Owen.
‘Our collection of older stuff has grown over the years,’ he said. ‘We have a first edition of Michelangelo’s poetry from the 1500s and a copy of [Thomas Paine’s] ‘Rights of Man’ from 1789.’
Students used to account for a good part of Avenue Victor Hugo’s clientele, Owen said. However, Internet booksellers have taken much of that business away as well.
‘Students would come in with their long lists, and the first ones here would get the books,’ Owen recalled. ‘We still keep the classics in stock though, like ‘1984’ and ‘Huckleberry Finn.”
Customers have been responding to the moving sale in surprising amounts, though, to support the store, McCaffrey said.
‘Business had fallen off and we assumed we weren’t important,’ he said. ‘But people have been very good. The sale’s been more than we expected or hoped for.’
And now, the Avenue Victor Hugo Bookstore has a new, albeit smaller, home that is still on Newbury Street. Johnson’s Paint Company, which has been on Newbury Street since 1938 and is only a few stores down from the bookstore, agreed to rent part of its second floor to the store.
Avenue Victor Hugo found out about the space by pure luck, according to Cassandra Fox, an employee at the store.
‘The owner of Johnson’s Paint just stopped by on kind of a whim, saying ‘I don’t know what your plans are, but we have this space,” she said. ‘It was really just chance.’
The new location has a first floor entrance with a small display area, but most of the store will be located upstairs. Avenue Victor Hugo plans to reopen there on the first of February, according to Fox.
‘The new store will be about a third smaller than our current one,’ Fox said. ‘We’re partly hoping the number of things we’re selling will be enough [to move into the store]. But the kinds of books we stock will remain the same.’
So for Avenue Victor Hugo, it isn’t the end – just a new chapter.
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