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Tuesday, June 9, 2026

TUESDAY TRAVEL / TWO OF A KIND

Dennis Wills, La Jolla CA 
Comparing the iconic bookstores of Sylvia Beach and D.G. Wills 

By Thomas Shess

Some bookstores sell books. A rare few keep civilization from slipping off the table. 

Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company in Paris was one of those places. Dennis Wills’ D.G. Wills Books in La Jolla is another. 

They are not twins. 

 Sylvia Beach and James Joyce, Paris 

Paris had Joyce, Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald, Pound, and the entire unruly tribe of expatriate modernism drifting in and out like unpaid weather. 

La Jolla has Girard Avenue, sea air, academics, aging poets, graduate students, book hunters, and browsers who enter for one title and emerge wiser  with three books they did not know they needed. 

But the kinship is unmistakable. 

Beach’s shop began as a lending library, literary post office, confessional, salon, publisher, and halfway house for difficult geniuses. Her greatest act of courage was publishing James Joyce’s Ulysses when more comfortable publishers would not touch it. She did not just stock literature. She midwifed it. 

Dennis Wills' bookstore carries that same endangered spirit on the West Coast. It is not designed by committee. It does not flatter the hurried customer. It asks you to slow down, look upward, bend sideways, read spines, follow hunches, and submit to accident. That is the old religion of bookstores: discovery by wandering. 

Independent bookstores of this kind are not efficient. Thank heaven. Efficiency is what gives us algorithms. Places like Beach’s Paris shop and Wills’ La Jolla shop give us serendipity, eccentricity, conversation, and the human being behind the counter who knows that the book you came in for may not be the book you need. 

That is why these two stores belong in the same sentence. One stood on the Left Bank and helped launch modern literature. The other stands in La Jolla and reminds San Diego that books are not decorative objects or delivery units. They are arguments, passports, provocations, and sometimes rescue boats. 

Sylvia Beach gave Joyce a harbor. 

Dennis Wills gives readers one. One of a kind? 

Yes. Two of a kind? Also yes. 

That is the contemporary miracle. 

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Anais Nin and current Shakespeare & Co. owner George Whitman, 1974

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 Claude Picasso and Francoise Gilot with Dennis Wills, La Jolla.

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The author of this blog is founder of PillartoPost.org Daily Online Magazine style blog and former Editor in Chief of San Francisco Magazine and Executive Editor with San Diego Magazine.







Monday, June 8, 2026

LOCAL / WHAT'S UP AT CITY HALL THIS WEEK

San Diego City Council Chambers, 202 C Street. Downtown.

Community Coalition Bulletin 

 The San Diego Community Coalition publishes this email bulletin to keep our members informed about important Council and Planning Commission hearings and other city public meetings. 

 Monday, June 8: City Council, 10 a.m. 

 Agenda: https://sandiego.hylandcloud.com/211agendaonlinecouncil/Meetings/ViewMeeting?id=7008&doctype=1&site=council 

 Items 600, 601, 602, 639, 643, 644: Proclamations 

Why it matters: We must ask again for an explanation of how and why honorees are chosen. The last three were added to a very packed agenda in the last few days. The last two (including a Scripps Health administrator who is a Rotary Club officer) have no supporting documents. Everyone agrees that Council meetings run too long. These performative agenda items add extra time but little civic substance. 

 Item 613: 2026 Update to the San Diego Municipal Code (Land Development Code) 

 Why it matters: One of the amendments “would increase … the City Council appeal fee [on project and environmental appeals] from $1,000 to $2,380, based on the unreimbursed staff time required to process and hear the appeals.” This would shut out public input by more than doubling public access fees to get a hearing before the City Council. The San Diego Democratic Party’s Environmental Club has appealed the proposal. And community planning groups, which are formally charged with conveying community input, should not be charged for appeals. 

 Monday, June 8: City Council, 2 p.m. 

 Agenda: https://sandiego.hylandcloud.com/211agendaonlinecouncil/Meetings/ViewMeeting?id=7008&doctype=1&site=council 

 Item 640: Reduction of Solid Waste Management Fee in Fiscal Years 2028 and 2029 

Item 641: Repeal Balboa Park Paid Parking User Fee 

Why it matters: These two items constitute a settlement of a lawsuit against the City’s bait-and-switch trash fees. The City agreed to scale back the trash fees. As an unexpected bonus, it will restore free parking in Balboa Park starting on or before January 1, 2027. 

Background: https://obrag.org/2026/05/city-surrenders-on-trash-fees-and-paid-balboa-park-parking/ 

Tuesday, June 9: City Council, 1 p.m. 

 Agenda: https://sandiego.hylandcloud.com/211agendaonlinecouncil/Meetings/ViewMeeting?id=7031&doctype=1&site=council 

 Item 704: Approval of the City’s 2027 Budget 

 Why it matters: One of the most contentious budget cycles in recent memory is expected to wrap up with the announcement of the restoration of arts funding including $6 million from the City treasury and $3 million from the Prebys Foundation. 

 Background: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/06/05/san-diego-restores-10m-in-arts-funding-reversing-proposed-budget-cuts-heres-how/ 

 Tuesday, June 9: San Diego Housing Authority, 2:00 p.m. 

 Agenda: https://sdhc.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/06092026-Housing-Authority-Regular-Meeting-Agenda.pdf 

 From Robert Campbell in Encanto: “The 2025 settlement in the Patrice Baker vs City of San Diego lawsuit strictly limits the concentration of new affordable housing projects in the city's low-resource areas. Yet, the Housing Commission (SDHC) continues [to] directly undermine the state Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) law and the explicit terms of the Baker settlement. In the SDHC presentation for Item #705 on Tuesday's agenda, the two projects they highlight on page 8 of their report are both located in census tracts that score 1 of 9 points for opportunity, making them solidly low-resource. No other affordable housing is highlighted in the report, and [there is] no mention of AFFH or resource opportunity.” 

 Tuesday, June 9: “Homes for All of Us” Forum

Mayor Todd Gloria’s Planning Department is hosting a June 9 “community input” meeting on his “Homes for All of Us” initiative on Tuesday, June 9, at 5:30 p.m. at the Malcolm X Library at 5148 Market Street in Valencia Park. Unfortunately, the forum is already full, and no more reservations will be accepted. The Ocean Beach Rag newspaper will send a reporter to cover the event and file a story.  Library Phone: 619-527-3405

Background: https://obrag.org/2026/06/planning-dept-holding-community-input-on-mayor-glorias-homes-for-all-of-us-be-there-to-ask-questions-tues-june-9th/ 

 Thursday, June 11: Land Use and Housing Committee, 1 p.m. 

Agenda: https://sandiego.hylandcloud.com/211agendaonlinecomm/Meetings/ViewMeeting?id=7045&doctype=1&site=comm 

 Item 3: Resolution Supporting Assembly Bills 1903, 1406, and 1070 Aimed at Expanding Homeownership 

 Why it matters: These three bills are aimed at boosting condominium production by changing how construction defect claims are handled (1903), dismantling consumer protections for condo buyers (1406), and relaxing building code standards on multifamily housing projects (1070). 

 In-person: Council and Housing Authority, 202 C St., 

To participate via Zoom and submit written comments, click on the meeting agenda and look for the links. 

--Forwarded to the media by San Diego citizen Kate Callen.