Crazy Wisdom Bookstore & Tearoom, Ann Arbor, Mich., will close in mid-February unless a buyer is found before then. In a letter to patrons posted on Facebook, co-owners Bill Zirinsky and Ruth Schekter wrote that they will be shuttering the physical bookshop on the eve of its 40th anniversary, and after a third of a century of owning it, on the day after Valentine's Day 2022.
Zirinsky and Schekter plan to continue expanding the Crazy Wisdom Community Journal (print and online) and enhance their digital presence with the Crazy Wisdom Biweekly Ezine. They will also reinvigorate the websites crazywisdom.net, crazywisdomjournal.com, shopcrazywisdom.com and AnnArborHolistic.com.
"There is a relentlessness to a retail business--open 7 days a week, 360 days a year, and to the hamster-wheel aspect of staffing and management issues," they noted. "Our own family has grown up, and we're in our 60s, and we're ready to look out upon a new and different horizon. The bookstore had a very profitable year (due to having closed the tea room at the onset of the pandemic), and that's not a bad way to go out!
"We know that Crazy Wisdom has been a unique destination and special bookstore in our region, and treasured by its friends and customers. We and our longtime managers and staff, past and present, have so much gratitude for having had the privilege over these decades to serve people in our region who are searching in their lives--spiritually, psychologically, holistically and in terms of sustainable and conscious living. We intend for Crazy Wisdom to continue to be a beacon of consciousness in the region, though perhaps not in the form of a bricks-and-mortar retail business."
Although they own the renovated Main Street building in which the bookshop is located, it is not for sale. Zirinsky and Schekter will be taking some months to decide how to best use the building, so Crazy Wisdom's bookstore operation will go "on sabbatical" as they consider next steps. Serious inquiries into buying the bookstore, and renting the space, or related ideas, are welcome. Interested parties can contact billz@crazywisdom.net.