The ghost of Jack Kerouac, the Bare-Breasted Ladies, and some of America's top lawyers are all part of a fight to save the independent bookshops of the United States: a battle which has international implications for the small independent retailers who are being forced out of business by multinational chains.
This week it was confirmed that one of America's best-known bookshops, City Lights of San Francisco, is to become a city "landmark", giving it the protection from developers in enjoyed by listed buildings in Britain. This may give the shop - co-founded by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1953 - a status that could help it survive the current crisis.
Last week the new Borders store in Santa Cruz was invaded by protesters throwing stinkbombs and a group of masked topless women called the Bare-Breasted Ladies. The Bare-Breasted Ladies have also staged actions against Gap and Starbucks.
Their sentiments, if not their action, received the backing of the local mayor, Keith Sugar, who said: "Borders is not welcome here and they know that. These kinds of predatory businesses pose a threat to our town and to local businesses."
Meanwhile, an anti-trust suit is being brought against the Borders and another book chain, Barnes & Noble, by the American Booksellers Association, which represents 3,100 independent book shops and 26 bookstores throughout the US.
It alleges that the chains have unfairly used their clout to coerce publishers into offering special deals and promotions which have not been offered to the smaller bookshops. It will go to trial next year in the San Francisco district court.
Borders and Barnes & Noble deny that they are "engaged in a pattern of soliciting, inducing and receiving secret discriminatory and illegal terms from publishers".
But many bookshop owners believe the future of the small bookshop may depend on the outcome of the case. The decision is likely to have ramifications in the chains v independents war that stretch beyond the world of bookselling.
Jack Kerouac - who has a nearby street called after him - Allen Ginsberg and the beat poets all used City Lights as a gathering place, and it was the first bookshop in the US to sell only paperbacks.
"We have a very, very loyal base of customers but the future is never assured," said Paul Jamazaki, who is a buyer for the shop.
An encouraging number of new young customers and a "brilliant" young staff kept the shop in business, he said, but since the chains arrived its customers had been buying fewer books.
San Francisco still has about 50 small bookshops, many of them specialist ones.
Margie Ghiz, owner of the Midnight Special bookstore in Santa Monica, renowned throughout Los Angeles as the place for liberal leftwingers to buy books, believes that her shop has survived because of loyal customers, staff who know and care about books, and a generous landlord.
"When Borders opened down the street from us in 1995 our sales fell by between 35 and 40% in the first year," she said. "I don't know how long we're going to be able to last."
Ms Ghiz said that the arrival of Amazon.com and the electronic book were another difficulty facing small bookshops. The fact that the electronic book trade was having its first convention in New York this autumn was a sign of its growing power. "When they're big enough to have their own convention, you know they're big," she said.
Orin Teicher, the chief operating officer of the ABA, said of the civil action yesterday: "We're confident the things we've alleged will be proven true and we will prevail."
He said that the number of independent bookshops had declined significantly over the years but every poll of book-buyers indicated that there was support for the smaller bookshops. The point of the action, he added, was to end the "uneven playing field" on which they were competing against the big chains. "We think there is a future [for the independent bookshop] if we can win our action."
Borders and Barnes & Noble will not comment on the lawsuit, except to say that they follow "accepted industry practices in all business dealings". Borders in Santa Cruz said that despite the protests there had been much local support for their arrival.
