How does the idea of visiting a historic bookshop make you feel?
“Bookstores re wondrous places are they not? ( Higasa Akai)
It looked like a stormy weather weekend in Santa Cruz, California. So I thought where would be a logical place for me to head when the skies turn gray? Thus awakening to the rain pelting down steadily beyond the bedroom window of our bungalow, making alternative plans for daily activities thus weighed heavily on my mind this Saturday morning. With good timing, I’d then recalled the enjoyment I felt from the creatively customized management of two independent bookstores we’d previously experienced in California on this road trip; “Vromans” in Pasadena, and “Ink Spell ” in Half Moon Bay. Consider for instance that “Ink Spell” during our visit offered a $2.00 per book promotion called “Grab Bag” involving prewrapped novel purchase options labeled only with their respective genre. I’d thus randomly took a surprise chance at historic fiction, biography, and sports, and “hit the jackpot” with three interesting novels.
Opportunity thus entered my mind then to engage in a similarly enlightening ambience at the historic Santa Cruz Bookshop” downtown on this slow down rainy day. And as anticipated, such browsing of this engaging abundance of books and other paraphernalia there at my leisure would become a fun and relaxing way to pass the time. In particular I’d seemed drawn to several eye catching book category sections popping out everywhere I looked directed toward local community themes. They included The University of Santa Cruz campus section for souvenir purchasers, a “Play Ball” setup for Francisco Giants baseball enthusiasts ,a tall rack of local author writings and an “Amplify” spot that catered literature to the politically liberal spirit of the Santa Cruz community. As far as actual buying, I did not have much of an urge of mine to seriously look for a specific author or book title yet three non fiction books titles seemed to randomly jump off the shelves to select me as I aimlessly browsed the aisles.
It’s fortunate that so far on on this journey, we’ve experienced for the most part pleasant weather conditions for sightseeing. But on those days of bone chilling cold or rainy ugliness, the quiet refuge of a local bookstore seems to be the ideal place to go a I continue my quest to not rush around on this roadtrip. For they serve as sanctuaries of knowledge, escape, and community interest for me wherever I am at.
Snippets of a Traveling Mind 
Leave a comment