Alphabet City bookstore opens brick-and-mortar location in downtown Victoria

Alphabet City is no newcomer to Victoria’s bookstore landscape after running a pop-up shop in the back of Habit Coffee’s Chinatown location. Now, the business has a brand-new shop of their own. 

The business is run by partners Talia Freimanis and Michael Pollard, who between them have been working in bookstores or libraries for decades. 

Both Freimanis and Pollard are from Vancouver Island, and have spent most of their time working in the literary scene in Vancouver. 

Alphabet City came together as a concept in the spring of 2023. That’s when they began collecting both new and used books to start their operation when they were ready. 

By early 2025, they had enough books to begin their journey and moved back to the island from Vancouver.

The pop-up was established in February, 2026, and was always meant to be the precursor to Alphabet City finding a brick-and-mortar location to establish themselves. 

While operating the pop-up, the duo viewed a few locations, but nothing seemed right until they found the space where Alphabet City will open this weekend—1820 Government Street, in the historic Lim Dat building in downtown Victoria. 

“This block is the greatest block,” Freimanis told Victoria Buzz. “It’s all local businesses and they all compliment each other too.”

“We had our eyes on this spot and it just kind of materialized.”

After viewing the location in June, they acquired the space in mid-July and got possession on September 1st.

Since then they have both been working around the clock to get the space ready and put the books on the shelves. 

Though there are a myriad of bookstores in Victoria, Pollard and Freimanis say the more the merrier, and each shop differs from one another in terms of identity. 

“Since we started on this journey, like brick-and-mortar, three new bookshops have opened,” said Freimanis. 

“What a sign of a healthy town that so many book shops are opening up—like 15 years ago, there were more book shops than there are now so I feel like we’re circling back to that time.”

“There’s been so many bookstores opening up, but people wouldn’t necessarily say that about bakeries, right? More is more,” she added. 

Pollard noted that he believes Alphabet City sets itself apart because it is small enough to be well curated, but big enough that they can offer a pretty good selection of both new titles and used books. 

He estimates that they will have capacity for up to 18,000 new and used books in the new shop, with around one-third being fiction and the majority of their selection being non-fiction. 

Freimanis added that the two of them have been in the book business a combined 30 years between them, which has helped guide their curation process of the stock they carry. 

When asked to describe the identity of the shop in one word, Pollard characterized it as “intriguing.”

Alphabet City officially opens its doors to the public on Saturday, November 14th, and will be planning a party of some kind to celebrate the shop opening for sometime in December, once the couple have a chance to catch up on some sleep. 

The pop-up Alphabet City bookstore located in Habit Coffee’s Chinatown location will also remain open. The pop-up offers a small sample of what their new location has for those looking to browse books while caffeinating. 

Looking to the future, Pollard and Freimanis say that they are not looking to grow or expand—they simply want to run a book shop of their own and offer the area a new community hub where people can connect and chat about books.