{"id":515186,"date":"2026-11-01T16:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T16:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/515186\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T16:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T16:44:18","slug":"owners-of-niebla-new-tenderloin-bookstore-lean-into-the-spooky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/515186\/","title":{"rendered":"Owners of Niebla, new Tenderloin bookstore, lean into the spooky"},"content":{"rendered":"

Niebla is the Tenderloin\u2019s only bilingual bookstore \u2014\u00a0it sells books in Spanish and English, as well as coffee and pastries to accompany them. It is also the Tenderloin\u2019s only bookstore, period. The last closest thing \u2014\u00a0The Magazine \u2014\u00a0which sold vintage and rare LGBTQ+ magazines, books, and ephemera, closed in early 2023.<\/p>\n

Niebla means \u201cfog\u201d \u2014\u00a0Mar\u00edfer Ram\u00edrez, who opened the store with her partner, David Garc\u00eda, grew up in Xalapa, Mexico in a town \u201csurrounded by a cloud forest.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ANiebla Bookstore and Cafe sign on October 30, 2026. Photo by Zoe Malen.<\/p>\n

Niebla opened two months ago at 374 Golden Gate Ave. and the timing couldn\u2019t be better. Ramirez is enamoured of all things spooky and Latino, she said. And with Dia De Los Muertos, the Mexican holiday on which people ceremonially welcome back the spirits of loved ones who have died, almost here, the couple are planning to celebrate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nov. 1 falls on a Sunday this year. Though the bookstore is usually closed, Ram\u00edrez and Garc\u00eda are opening their doors to participate in the Tenderloin\u2019s Dia De Los Muertos festivities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The spooky landscape she called home also inspired much of the store\u2019s inventory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If it were only up to Ram\u00edrez, she\u2019d stack the shelves full of Latin American horror stories, especially ones written by women.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite her taste in dark literature, Ram\u00edrez is a friendly face in the bookstore. She is the first person to welcome customers, and offers guidance on pastries as well as books. Last week she leaned over to a woman who studied the Mexican desserts that fill the store\u2019s pastry case.<\/p>\n

\"AMar\u00edfer Ram\u00edrez talking with customers on October 30, 2026. Photo by Zoe Malen.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow about the Pan de Muerto,\u201d Ram\u00edrez whispers to the customer, describing the taste and texture of the traditional sweetbread. \u201cIt\u2019s delicious.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Niebla is all things Mexican, from the pastries to the decorations, books on shelves and music playing over the speakers. Ram\u00edrez contracts with two local Mexican bakers, Amidulce and Norte 45, for the noms on rotation and buys Mexican coffee beans from Oakland-based roasters, Proyecto Diaz Coffee.<\/p>\n

As for the book selection, that comes straight from Ram\u00edrez and Garc\u00eda, who bonded over a love for reading.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AA note clipped to a book recommended by Mar\u00edfer Ram\u00edrez. Photo by Zoe Malen.<\/p>\n

The pair met in 2017 when a mutual friend invited them both to a party and requested the two carpool. They then spent the entire drive discussing literature and music.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I went to his house for the first time I realized we had a lot of the same books,\u201d Ram\u00edrez said, with a giggle. \u201cWhen we moved in together we had tons of duplicates.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Garc\u00eda joined in as co-owner a few months after Ram\u00edrez rubber-stamped the business plans. He has a full-time job as an engineer but has always had a love for reading and creative writing. Before he moved to the United States in 2007, he studied writing in Mexico City and published a few short stories.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019s put down the pen for now and focused on navigating the ins and outs of opening a business in San Francisco. Ram\u00edrez and Garc\u00eda received a $50,000 Storefront Opportunity Grant from the city to open Niebla. The program gives new or existing business owners grants to retrofit and build out vacant storefronts in certain neighborhoods.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor both of us, it\u2019s our first direct business experience,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been an intense crash course \u2026 It\u2019s been a lot of research.\u201d<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take any convincing for Garc\u00eda to jump on board. Ram\u00edrez\u2019s vision for the store matched Garc\u00eda\u2019s own ethos: that every community deserves a good bookstore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"StorefrontThe exterior of Niebla Bookstore and Cafe on October 30, 2026. Photo by Zoe Malen.<\/p>\n

\u201cNiebla is a space that is trying to contribute to the existing book ecosystem in San Francisco,\u201d Garc\u00eda said. \u201cAt the same time we are also trying to bring a different point of view and fill some gaps for people like us that are interested in reading in our own language, in Spanish.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two love\u00a0what Ram\u00edrez calls \u201cuncanny horror stories\u201d \u2014\u00a0a taste that she first developed\u00a0 growing up in her foggy hometown.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was obsessed with fantasy,\u201d Ram\u00edrez said. \u201cFairy tales, vampires, ghosts.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her favorite story? Horacio Quiroga\u2019s La Gallina Degollada \u2014 The Decapitated Chicken, a horrifying tale that is a South American classic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Tenderloin\u2019s sizable population of Latin American immigrants is what drew Ram\u00edrez to the neighborhood in the first place. It\u2019s too early to map out the business trends, Ram\u00edrez said, but the store is already home to a group of regulars. Foot traffic from the nearby federal and city buildings are leading more people into the shop for a midday espresso break; families that live directly above the store come down with their children to read. Horror books written by women are selling the most, as are poetry collections and fiction novels.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ADavid Garc\u00eda checking out a customer on October 30, 2026. Photo by Zoe Malen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe love the Tenderloin,\u201d Ram\u00edrez said. \u201cWe cannot deny that there are a lot of challenges in this neighborhood but it is a neighborhood that has a lot of families and children so we need to work to make these spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Niebla is the Tenderloin\u2019s only bilingual bookstore \u2014\u00a0it sells books in Spanish and English, as well as coffee…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[11607,18362,101,103,102,104,106,105,73766,13528],"class_list":["post-515186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-bookstore","tag-people-we-meet","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-small-business-profiles","tag-tenderloin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}