In Search of Lost Bookshops: A Stonewall Memory by Kristofer Collins

 In Search of Lost Bookshops: A Stonewall Memory

 by Kristofer Collins

There were Spring mornings in Oakland so exquisite, the air cool and dry, dusted with sunlight and perfumed of car exhaust and coffee. Occasionally a breeze would interject, offering its sharp chill as counterpoint to the almost Summery feeling rising within, as I sat sipping my first cup of the day, watching the sparse traffic traverse Forbes Avenue.

My classes at Pitt would necessarily be forsaken; days like this, luxuriant soft clouds of time, candy-floss pink and deeply sugared by the lazy warmth, were meant for easing back and sipping something light, a book of poems open in front of you, an attempt at a poem of one’s own tightly knotted in the margins of the old browning page.

These were days for secretly listening to the conversations bumping along all around; the fast talkers, heavy thinkers, and humid lovers all releasing words into the world, language pouring off them like carbon dioxide. “She had a face like Mary Pickford; a face that could burn these buildings down,” someone behind me said and I wrote it down and it became a rather poor poem in my sorry scribble but ever since I’ve associated beauty with a kind of silent arson.

Ah, the sunshine was like children tumbling down steps, heedless and joyful, no harm could come to it so why not make the leap. This city, chaotic and hard, covered in ashes and concrete, it grew itself in one’s heart like a garden on such rich mornings. The city shone and the bad blood between us was unto a soap bubble popping, gone as though it never had existed.

Leaving the café and the spinning talk of strangers behind one floats the long corridor of Forbes passing the sand-colored libraries and lecture halls, creeping beneath the towering limestone exclamation, sliding up Craig, the shop fronts blurring, cumin sharpening the air, to Fifth, itself a crying songbird, and finally disappearing quickly into Shadyside.

A frail canopy of new leaves shivers and crackles like static, like a radio caught between stations, the signals of this new Spring make thick music of trees. The neighborhood is noisy with architecture, shifting shapes and ornaments, planks of wood and steel ladders lean against porches. There are kids hidden in backyards and dogs barking.

There is poetry to be had all around and it is poetry that hastens one’s steps. There is a shop to be sought off of Walnut and neither the fake noses nor fart gags in the Variety Store window, nor the slumbering kittens of the Pet Pad will distract or delay. A left onto Filbert, then just a few steps down into an inconspicuous lacuna, through the heavy door, and into the tiny bookshop.

After such a lovely march through the bright sea of sunshine, one’s eyes rapidly dilate due to the sudden loss of light. The tenebrous space is disorienting at first, but once acclimated, the walls of the Stonewall Bookshop veritably burst wide with books, books, and many more books. Jerry Farber, bearded and bespectacled, gray-haired and serene, calmly acknowledges your entrance then quietly returns to reading the newspaper. Behind him a row of signed hardcover Bukowski, as always captures one’s attention as though it were a wild butterfly.

His shop is rabbit hutch small, but neatly appointed with several display tables. Dark and cool, the space is absent of glare and lit kindly by scant light fixtures. This place is a favorite get-away, an island one gladly books passage to on warm and lovely days when college holds no sway over one’s hard-pumping heart. The day is hungry for poetry and here toward the back of the shop behind the literature (ooh maybe a pinch of Nabokov), snuggled against the plays (Tennessee Williams is always such a flirt), is the poetry section, humble and flawless as a haiku.

Except for Jerry the shop is absent of other people. The ambient thrum of the lights and cash register, the padded thud of one’s own footsteps, and the muted lapping waves of street sounds diffusing through the door all mix together into a low level humming as though the shop itself was purring some little song of its own. Thumbing through fine books of poems, pages flipping, flapping like wings – Elizabeth Bishop, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Frank O’Hara, Wallace Stevens, Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

Many mornings were spent like this, idly reading poems, sitting cross-legged on the floor while classes came and went. I regret no part of my truancy and my only qualm is that I did not spend more time in Jerry’s shop.

When the Stonewall went out of business, victim to the chains and a disinterested neighborhood, I skipped class and walked to Shadyside one last time. It was difficult to feel anything like the spiritedness inspired by previous visits. Jerry was a sigh in gray clothing that day, disappointment in a shirt unbuttoned at the collar. Jerry had slashed the prices on everything to move as much stock out as possible. I bought a few Richard Wright paperbacks and was sickened by my vulturism. We said a few words, Jerry and I, and that was it. I read a few pages of The Outsider in a nearby parking lot then walked back to Oakland.

The memory of the bookshops that once were still holds sway over me. I freely admit to a certain amount of romanticizing, which herein is on full peacock display, of the old shops now vanished. Other personal favorites from the rogue’s gallery of local indies were Ice-9 and Pinocchio. I purchased my first book by Frank O’Hara at Ice-9, a used copy of Lunch Poems, the very same book which I carried stashed in my jacket during the earliest poetry readings I gave, tucked close to my heart for courage and protection. Pinocchio, just a short walk from the Stonewall, supplied many a perfect gift for birthdays and Christmases. Then, of course, there was St. Elmo's on the South Side with its equally eye-popping selection of religious books and pornography.

And there was Jay's Book Stall. But that is a story for another day. Oh boy, is it ever!

But on those great and everlasting spring days, I would pay for my stack of poetry and quickly hit the bakery for pastries and coffee. With my treats in hand, both sugary and sonnetty I would stroll up and across Walnut, where I’d set up something like a picnic on an available wooden bench. After a nibble of warm muffin and a slurp of steaming coffee, I’d tuck in and read poems while the traffic ambled along beside me and the frenzied kittens leapt and spun in the pet shop window behind.



(reprinted from The New Yinzer)



Kristofer Collins is the editor of The Pittsburgh Book Review. His latest book is The River Is Another Kind of Prayer: New & Selected Poems (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2020).