One of the joys of San Francisco is discovering those little hole-in-the-wall places: a favorite pho restaurant; that certain shoe repair shop.
In the case of G.F. Wilkinson Books & Gallery, the store really is just a hole—well, three holes—in the wall at 34 Trinity Place between Sutter and Bush streets. It displays books, vinyl albums, art and ephemera in these coves, just a couple of feet deep, and on a rolling cart and tables in a tidy alley where FiDi workers flutter through on their way to or from lunch, deliveries or a coffee break.
George Frederick Wilkinson, who goes by Rick, opened in the fall of 2011 and has about 1,000 books out at any given time, he says. They skew older, so many have much more intriguing covers than today's blander designs. Or they're titles you wouldn't run across at the mega-stores. "I tend to stay away from new best-sellers," he said. "I wouldn't say any of my books are by any means rare, but a little out of the ordinary. Condition is important."
Wilkinson uses his bookseller's instincts to choose which titles to put out. "It's not me curating so much as processing other peoples' interests," he said. "In the used book trade, you keep things floating out there and they get rediscovered." His favorites include Djuna Barnes, Wendell Berry and J.P. Donleavy, but his collection runs the gamut. He continuously gets new stuff, such as a box of books on architecture that had been in storage for 18 years. A book on rocketry published in 1964 got a couple of young fellows excited when he first opened, Wilkinson said.
He also sells via his website and recently shipped a book on Italian glass to a buyer in South Africa. But he enjoys his time sitting in the little nook and meeting people. Hours are 11am–4pm Monday through Friday, weather permitting, and he closes on Fridays from the beginning of May through Labor Day. The ferocious wind tunnel effect in the alley thwarts him more so than the rain these days, but he's bundled up in layers, including an argyle vest, dapper sport coat and beret. "I enjoy it out here watching all the different age groups approach all the different objects," he said.
Customer Steve Nelson browses and then purchases a copy of Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who wrote extensively about his experiences as a pilot in the pioneering days of aviation. "He's known for The Little Prince," Nelson said, "but these, to me, are more interesting." Later, two men inquire about Chinese block prints on display, and Wilkinson names a price but tells them it's negotiable. "I don't have a lot of overhead, so I can keep my prices low," he said.
Wilkinson studied literature and poetry in college and minored in psychology. After a brief stint working at a psych hospital, he took a job in 1978 at Albatross Book Company in the Tenderloin, which had opened in 1964 at 166 Eddy St. near Taylor Street and boasted three floors of books. He became the manager, and after the founder died, he owned it from 1986 to 1997. "I really loved that place," he said.
But straws kept piling on the camel's back. First, there was the epidemic of drug violence in the area. "When I started there, the drug of choice was heroin," Wilkinson said. "Occasionally you'd have some thievery; nothing major. But when crack happened—first cocaine, then crack—suddenly drug activity was furious and there was a lot of violence. I saw a guy shot dead in the road and had to go testify about it."
Then there were continuous setbacks with a seismic retrofit. A fire, sprinkler system snafus and sewer backups wreaked havoc on the inventory. "By the time the whole thing was done," Wilkinson said, "my business was ruined. It had taken such a toll on me mentally." The rise of chain bookstores had nothing to do with the store's demise, he added. The location is now home to the Vietnamese Youth Development Center.
Married with two kids, Wilkinson took over a space at Third and Clement streets for Albatross II, and later co-owned Goldwasser & Wilkinson on Geary. For a time, he managed Acorn Books on Polk Street. He also worked with Doug Johns at 250 Sutter St. running auctions of Western items, and he opened Wilkinson's Western Gallery in Beijing, China, in October 2009, which closed in 2011.
Wilkinson always wanted to open a smaller book shop like the kind you see on the Left Bank in Paris, he said. When he found the space on Trinity and the rent was right, he took it. "Some thought it was a pop-up," he said, or a concept art installation, or just "an old guy selling his books." A wooden crate he uses for display and the tray on top "are pretty much what's left of the old store," he said.
