AN AMATEUR PHILOLOGIST IN BERKELEY:

Black Oak Books strives to stay open, but the times, they are a-changing

Heidi Benson, [San Francisco] Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, January 15, 2007

Don Pretari doesn't want to shut the doors of Black Oak Books. And not just because running the store has been his life's work.

When not attending to the details of the 23-year-old business, he spends every spare minute studying languages, including Quranic Arabic, classical Chinese, biblical Hebrew, Ethiopic and more.

"All the languages I study are dead," he says. "Who would hire me?"

But with profit margins down, a five-year lease coming due and a partner who wants to retire, Pretari, 49, may have to seek a vocation less perfectly suited to a Berkeley-educated polymath.

Last week, he sent up a trial balloon, inviting someone, anyone, to buy one or both Black Oaks stores -- the Berkeley location on Shattuck Avenue or the San Francisco store on Irving Street. (A short-lived third store in North Beach closed last year.)

"We'd like Black Oak to keep going," he says, adjusting his round glasses and settling into a chair in the back office, a warren of books. "We're exploring every possibility, even if that means someone else has to come in and own it."

Whether Pretari and his partners sell the store or find a way to keep it going themselves -- perhaps through renegotiation of the nearly $1 million Berkeley lease -- they don't want to see it change.

"It's a niche store, slanted toward the scholarly," says Pretari, noting that the landlord wants them to stay. "I wouldn't want to sell the store to someone who wouldn't carry books from university presses because they don't sell well enough."

Today, Pretari runs the finances, does new book buying and manages the store with Bob Brown, 68, whose specialty is rare and used books. (There are two other co-owners, but they are less involved in day-to-day operations.)

Pretari had more time for study just 10 years ago, when the staff was one-third larger. That's when he became interested in reading sacred texts in the original languages. Even now, he studies two hours a day -- down from six. He reads the Quran, with a dictionary, every morning, and he never takes a walk without his Latin note cards. His next project: to study math for pleasure. "I want to go back to arithmetic and follow it up as high as I can," he says. If he can do that and keep the bookstore going, great. "But I can't if I'm working 50-hour weeks."

[...]

I hope he finds a suitable buyer and is able to continue with his studies.