Independent Bookstore: Couth Buzzard

My love for Independent Bookstore Day is no secret. It has exposed me to some wonderful bookstores that I might never have visited otherwise. But not every independent bookstore participates in Independent Bookstore Day. And by focusing on the event, I’ve been skipping some wonderful independent bookstores. I don’t usually make New Year’s Resolutions, but this year I made an Independent Bookstore Store Resolution – to visit a nonparticipating independent bookstore every month.

Couth Buzzard

The Couth Buzzard Books was an obvious first choice. The bookstore has been around since 1988. I had visited the bookstore years ago and found it a little on the pricey side for a used bookstore. But last year my kid did an afterschool program less than a block away at the Bureau of Fearless Ideas. So I passed by it all the time, and sometimes dropped in. A recent Seattle Times article revealed just how shaky its future is, making it an obvious choice for the first bookstore to highlight. But the BFI program was over and I put it off until I had to go to the post office next door. And there in the window was The Artist’s Way, a very old book that had a bit of a resurgence a few years ago. Just a few days earlier my dad had recommended the book to me. It was fate. I stopped in and bought the book.

Serendipity

That sort of serendipity is what people love about used bookstores, and it’s definitely the right attitude to have when shopping at Couth Buzzard. Their inventory of mostly used books mixed with a few new releases is categorized by genre in little three-sided rooms formed by bookshelves along the south wall of the long, narrow space. Within each section they are roughly alphabetized, emphasis on roughly. You never know what you’ll find, and it’s pointless to arrive with a shopping list. Used bookstores have gotten more expensive, and Couth Buzzard no longer seems more expensive than others, so it’s a lot easier to just grab whatever you find without feeling guilty about budgets. It’s a browsing experience left over from a pre-Internet era when readers trusted the universe to send them their next book.

Third Place

Independent Bookstore Day participant Third Place Books was founded on the sociological idea that people need three places: a home; a workplace or school; and a third place where people interact and experience both community and diversity. Although they don’t cite the theory, Couth Buzzard is also founded on that principle and is definitely that place for Greenwood. There’s a coffee shop inside serving sandwiches and drinks. The seating area in the back hosts all kinds of community events, from book club meetings and foreign language practice sessions to open mic nights and local bands.

Why Couth Buzzard

It’s a weird name that I’ve always wondered about. Writing this post gave me the incentive to look for the answer. After painstaking research (reading their About page) I discovered that the founders wanted to evoke a British pub with the name and wanted to use the letters C and B for coffee and books.

Eventually they united the concept of the buzzard — nature’s great recycler, a nod to the used book trade — with a middle English word meaning “well-mannered” to indicate that this bird would be a polite plunderer. 

About – Couth Buzzard Books (buonobuzzard.com)

I feel like that story perfectly captures the quirky vibe of this thirty-something bookstore. And I hope they’re still peddling used books thirty years from now.