A McDonald's You'll Actually Miss

Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation Evicts SF Booklovers' 'Institution'

By Peter Jamison

In a section of the Tenderloin just off Market Street and 5th, where check-cashing outfits and strip clubs give way to desolate, garbage-littered streets, is the kind of store that San Franciscans love to say they love. It's McDonald's Bookshop, an emporium of more than a million used books, magazines and records that's been doing business on Turk Street since 1926. In its cavernous reading room and basement, lovers of the written word can find everything from vintage erotica - The Bedroom Impostor, anyone? - to a June 1946 edition of The American Theosophist.

This sort of thing may suit your taste. It decidedly does not suit the taste of the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, a low-income housing provider that this week evicted McDonald's owner Itzhak Volansky from the property. At issue is a heap of unpaid rent: Volansky says he owed TNDC from $10,000 to $12,000, but Bailey Williams, who works with the development corporation's property managers and is handling the eviction, says the amount in question is "significantly more than that."

Volansky is a fine character in his own right. The native of Israel calls himself "a musician stuck in the body of a bookseller," and spends his time outside McDonald's composing such offbeat classics as "I Shot The Lawyer, But I Did Not Shoot The Secretary" and "Every Cake You Bake, I'll Be Watching You." (He calls the latter the "unofficial theme song of Weight Watchers.") Volansky has his own theory about his eviction: He says TNDC is trying to get him out of the picture so it can pursue redevelopment plans for the entire block. "Just a suspicion," he says. Williams denies any such motivations. "That has nothing to do with it," he says.

Volansky has until Dec. 18 to vacate the property. Until then, he says, everything in the store will be half-priced. But the clearance sale probably won't bring much cheer to McDonald's regulars in an age when eccentric book vendors are an endangered species. "It's a crime," says Joseph Carlson, one of Volansky's customers. "This place is an institution. Hell, I learned to read here, sir." Really? Carlson smiles. "I learned to read a lot more. Let me put it that way."