“Black Oak Books, the large independent store — once a fixture in North Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto and now in West Berkeley — will close its doors at the end of the month. It has been in business for 33 years.
As good a year as 2015 was for independent booksellers, [owner Gary] Cornell said his store’s business grew by only 1 percent…Cornell added that turning a profit would be even tougher with Berkeley’s recent minimum wage increase, to $11 an hour”
Cornell said, “It means my expenses would go up 50 percent over the next five years, and to be honest, that just wasn’t in the cards.”