Downtown San Diego's East Village gained an independent bookstore in April 2025 when Hey Books! launched at 921 E Street with a curated mix of new and used titles. The inventory spans literary fiction, occult studies, architecture, travel, and children's sections, filling a genre breadth on E Street that complements the visual-art programming at Tenth Avenue Arts Center a few blocks south. Co-founders with backgrounds at Verbatim Books in North Park and The Book Catapult in South Park built the selection around rare finds, signed editions, and a quarter-operated blind-recommendation machine that dispenses miniature book picks. The San Diego Book Crawl, an annual multi-bookstore event drawing readers across 15 independent shops, includes Hey Books! on its downtown route. Bookish tote bags, branded merchandise, and sideline stationery expand the retail mix on an East Village block where Earths Elements adds crystal and mineral gift inventory to the same walkable stretch. The curation model blends publisher-direct new releases with estate-sourced vintage hardcovers, pricing used stock through a condition-grading system that evaluates binding integrity, page foxing, and dust-jacket completeness.