BELOVED BROWSER BOOKS will say goodbye this week to Hana Metzger’s brief and shining five months as manager. Metzger took over in the spring after working closely for the past six years with the usually smiling Jordan Pearson. Pearson stepped down after ensuring Browser’s future by guiding its transition into the Green Apple Books empire.

But she’s not going far. She will fulfill her plan to become a librarian, working at the North Beach branch library. And in some ways she’s not going at all. She vows to continue working at Browser for a day or two each week, but without the responsibilities she’s handled as manager.

“It’s exciting, but also bittersweet for me,” Metzger says. “I love the shop so much. I’m sad to be cutting back my hours, but I’m very excited for my new job, too. If I had more time I would do both.”

Browser Books has been on Fillmore for half a century. It started a block north, beside the Clay Theater, in what had once been Carlos Santana’s studio. Later the bookstore moved into the former meat market next door to what would become Peet’s Coffee — and grow, with Browser, into the social center of the neighborhood.

“Some people come in every day, some come in every few days,” she says. “Some have been coming here since before I was born.”

After graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in English, Metzger went on to a career in the restaurant business — until the pandemic put an end to that. She joined the Browser staff in 2020 when people were wearing masks. She also began online courses at San Jose State to get her master’s in library science. “There was no library science program in the city, and you have to have the degree to get a job,” she says. “The unexpected thing for me was that I just loved working in a bookshop. I liked it from the very beginning.”

She describes Browser as “a new bookstore that has the feel of a used bookstore.” The merger with Green Apple made those years an especially interesting time.

“Things were changing, and I’ve been given the freedom to do a lot of things,” she says. “Green Apple is very supportive, but they give us a lot of independence to order books and cultivate the selection we want to have here. It’s nice to have that freedom.”

In fact, she first applied to work at Green Apple’s home base on Clement Street. Green Apple forwarded her application to Pearson, her predecessor as manager. “It was the easiest interview of my life,” she says. “It was just a really nice conversation.”

Pearson’s easygoing demeanor helped smooth the transition. He always referred to the Browser staff as a family — and made it literally so by becoming romantically involved with longtime owner Stephen Damon’s daughter, Catie Damon, which “didn’t hurt a bit” with the transition, says Metzger. Now Pearson has taken city girl Catie home with him to the country. They moved to his hometown, Lodi, earlier this year to take over his family’s real estate business.

“Jordan and I did it together,” Metzger says of the new sections and new energy that have come to store. Of Green Apple’s ownership, she says: “It worked out really well for the store.” Pearson was confident he was leaving the right person in charge. “The shop is in exceptional hands with Hana,” he said at the time.

“She’s been great,” says longtime Browser employee Fred Martin, a neighborhood icon. She returned the compliment.

“Fred deserves all the credit for the shop,” she says. “He’s been so welcoming and supportive. People come in all the time and ask, ‘Where’s Fred?’ — and sometimes, ‘Where’s the bodybuilder?’ A lot of people think he owns it.”

Other than the enduring Fred Martin, who continues, after 46 years, to work on Wednesdays and Thursdays, the staff has evolved over the years. But it has remained tightly knit.

“We’re all really close,” says Metzger. Everyone who works here genuinely loves their job.” But she resists Pearson’s description of the staff as family, pointing out that some families don’t get along that well.

Browser and Fillmore Street are practically synonymous.

“It’s a great neighborhood,” Metzger says. “That’s another thing I liked from the beginning — maybe because I’m from a small town.” She grew up in Sutter Creek, just up the road a few miles from Pearson in Lodi. “I think Fillmore is a lot busier these days,” she says approvingly of the street’s recovery from the pandemic.

The bosses at Green Apple are still figuring out who the next manager should be. Metzger says all of the obvious candidates already working at Browser didn’t want the extra work. But she’ll still be around, at least one day a week, to help guide the future of a Fillmore institution.