Boulder City bookshop no bellwether

By Mike Trask

Friday, July 4, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Everett Chase doesn’t measure the economy in million-dollar increments like those big businesses on the Strip. In his little bookshop in Boulder City, $100 means a great day.

The 71-year-old is unconcerned about gas prices or the number of visitors to the small town, because he doesn’t worry much about making money selling atlases, used novels and the occasional Area 51 T-shirt to tourists who stop in Boulder City on the way to Hoover Dam.

“It just gives me something to do,” he says.

Yes, gas prices are soaring. This has been reported. The economy is slumping. That too has been much discussed. But those realities have a different effect in Boulder City, which seems content to draw some tourists going to the dam.

Chase’s bookstore is in a business district comprising shops that hawk antiques and collectibles. He’s next to an insurance salesman and across the street from a brew pub.

“I think it’s the best corner in town,” Chase says, looking out the window into the meandering traffic.

Even if nobody stops.

Around town there’s no consensus on how the economy’s playing out on the small scale. Bill Smith, who runs Back in Thyme, an antiques store on Nevada Way, says business hasn’t been too bad. Summer’s always quiet.

“July’s always the slowest month,” he says. “Once it gets hot outside, people aren’t out.”

Boulder City Councilman Mike Pacini, who serves as the city representative on the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said it’s tough to tell how gas prices and the economy have affected the local shops.

“I’ve talked to several businesses and they are feeling the pinch,” he says. “The boat people aren’t coming from Southern California.”

But he says nobody has ever tracked how many people pass through Boulder City in any day, week or year. The idea that people aren’t driving to the dam — or aren’t taking their boats to Lake Mead — cannot be proved.

Statistics from the National Park Service show 2.2 million people have visited the Lake Mead Recreation Area this year through April, a 4 percent increase from the 2.1 million who visited in the first four months of 2007.

But the area has several entrances, not just the one off U.S. 93 outside Boulder City. And not everybody who goes to the lake stops in town.

“The number of people who go to the lake doesn’t equal the number of people who visit Boulder City, or else we’d have boats everywhere in the city,” says Rose Ann Miele, a city spokeswoman. “You see boats at the gas stations and boats at the supermarkets. You don’t see the boats parked on the streets.”

There may even be a plus side to the high gas prices in Boulder City. The town has tried to market itself to its own residents as the perfect place for a “staycation” — clean air, hiking, shopping and dinner only 30 minutes from Las Vegas. Stay here for your vacation!

This weekend the city hosts its annual 4th of July Damboree and the local merchants are hoping for a big weekend.

Pacini says he’s sure everyone will be using the weekend’s activities to take the measure of the local economy.

Roseanne Shoaff already has her results. She manages the Boulder Dam Hotel and is excited that all 20 rooms are booked.

European travelers have been good to the town, she says.

“We’ve been fortunate that we haven’t felt the crunch,” Shoaff says. “We’re still getting the business that doesn’t want to spend the big bucks at the casinos. We get people who just want to relax.”

Chase said he’ll be open during the weekend festivities — but not so much because he wants to make money. That, he admits, would be a stupid reason to own a bookstore in the Internet Age.

He wants the store to be open because talking to potential customers helps pass the days.

In fact, since he opened this version of his shop he’s never turned a profit. He says he’ll probably close when his lease runs out in September.

Previous incarnations of Chase the Bookseller have fared just as poorly.

But they have always given him a steady stream of people to talk to.

In a telling sign of the times, Chase’s best-seller has taken a nose dive. It seemed for a while, when he opened the shop in early April, road atlases were huge. They were No. 1 on the Chase Best-seller’s list, an easy sale to make to out-of-towners driving through the Southwest — typically from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon.

But lately the atlases have fallen down the list. Chase ordered a dozen of them a few weeks ago and half of the $9.99 books are still in stock.

In Boulder City, that’s as good an economic indicator as any.