Here’s the other sketch I did downtown last week, actually over the course of a couple of days because I was a bit cold (and busy) the first day, so went back and finished it off, adding some paint. It was busy downtown, there were lots of last few-days-before-Christmas shoppers, and groups of teenagers roaming about after the last day of school finished early, all the lads looking similar with that same haircut the teenage boys have now, you’ve seen it, the one with the fluffy looking hair and short sides. It was cold out, I had to go inside a few shops just to warm up, and buy more things. In Newsbeat for example I went in and got another little Jellycat (one of those cute stuffed toys, they import them from Britain), and it was packed, everyone in line was buying a different Jellycat. Good to see though. It’s nice to see downtown busy and healthy, and it’s shops like this we need, not more boba tea cafes or frozen yoghurt shops or chain restaurants, and not that I don’t use them myself, but I don’t want more of them replacing the useful shops. This is the popular Avid Reader bookshop (I have a number of bookshops in my sketchbook now, did some more in London) which is a great place to pick up Christmas gifts, books as well as other things. As I’ve mentioned before this was the very first place I worked in America, back when Alzada ran the bookshop (she sold the store just before Covid, and she died a few years ago), and I always enjoyed my experiences there, working part-time as the book-keeper and staying on even after I got my full-time job at UC Davis, right up to when my son was born. I used to like working in the evenings when there would be book events, I’d be upstairs working on the invoices, I did that same job in London at a bookshop, one that was a little less successful in the end, as it closed less than a couple of years after I moved to California after a few decades in business; it’s been a tough time for bookshops, so it’s great when we have one that is doing alright, and is a real fixture for the local community. I’ve even given a couple of talks here myself about urban sketching (one of them being a book talk for Gabi Campanario’s first book in which I was featured), and I did an ArtAbout exhibit in here as well, a long time ago now. It’s fairly different inside now than when I worked there, a lot more products on sale, but the outside still feels the same with that familiar old sign. So I stood on the street and sketched and thought about books. I really need to write a new one myself, maybe in 2025.