What I love about independent bookstores is that each one has its own focus, its own flavor. The Bodhi Tree in Los Angeles (sadly gone now) was a place of absolute wonder in the metaphysical hay-days of the 1980’s. Little rooms attached to other little rooms no bigger than closets. You could find everything from the common Kahlil Gibran to the most obscure pagan testament.

City Lights is housed in an old building in San Francisco. Funny how so many independent bookstores exist in old buildings. You enter into a mezzanine where the cashiers hang out. You can go to your right and up a couple of steps to a maze of small connected rooms or straight ahead and down the stairs to a one room basement. All rich with the scent of books and dampness and oldness. City Lights carries everything with a leaning toward beatnik and hippie and renegade writings. Of course!

Our store has a metaphysical leaning. I had a customer come in one day looking for Christian books. I walked him to our religious section where we have books about Christianity and Bibles, books about Judaism, Gnostic writings, the saints. I then told him that we had another section with books about Buddha, Zen, Hindu, Pagan, Muslim, Tao and Islam teachings. He asked me why the Christian section wasn’t bigger. I told him there was a large Christian bookstore in San Luis Obispo. They carry only Christian books. He informed me that that didn’t matter. “This is America,” he said, “you should have more Christian books.”

No, this is America and we are an independent bookstore and we should carry any type of book we want to carry in any quantity we choose. That is the sheer beauty of it. Isn’t it?    

I didn’t mention to the man that we have a Wiccan section. Maybe I should have!