Oxford Memories

Whenever I go on vacation, I tend to visit college campuses and bookstores in whatever town I am visiting. These are not the usual tourist attractions, but I like them because they are pretty and relaxing and they give me a warm feeling of tranquility and intellectual challenge. Serendipitously, colleges and good bookstores they are often found near each other.

When we visited the San Francisco Bay area a few years ago, we stopped for the afternoon at the University of California campus in the People’s Republic of Berkeley and walked down to the Cody’s Books on Telegraph Road. It was a delightfully chaotic store full of light with a rough-hewn charm. My son found a book he had been looking for and I bought from a street vendor a tie-dyed tee shirt that screams “Souvenir of Berkeley” much louder than anything with actual words on it.

Sue Trowbridge recently off-handedly mentioned that the Telegraph Road branch of Cody’s was going out of business. I’m sorry to see it go. For a few decades now, independent bookstores have been falling like canaries in a mine disaster.

A bookstore I miss tremendously is Oxford Books in Atlanta and I’m not the only one. When I first discovered it while in college, it was just an oversized strip center store with a very small narrow mezzanine that served coffee, pastries, and Dr Browns sodas. Nowadays every self-respecting bookstore has to have a snack bar, but back then this was a major innovation. Oxford was my favorite late night haunt. On weekends I think it was open very late, until 1 am or something. It was in the Peachtree Battle Shopping Center between Midtown and Buckhead which made it very convenient to swing by after dinner or a movie and browse. I spent many a late weekend night with my future wife just browsing and soaking up the atmosphere.

Then it expanded into the space next door, nearly doubling in size. Up at the top of the parking lot, right off of fabled Peachtree Street, there was a large old house that became Oxford Too. This became my favorite haunt. The front of the store had aisles of remaindered and discount books. Then there was an enormous used books section. Oxford Too also had comic books and sheet music, but the draw for me was the separately walled off collectible book section. This portion kept irregular hours at the whim of the manager that maintained it, but it had rows of vintage science fiction and contemporary literature. As a college student, this stuff was well out of my price range, but it gave me ambition.

After I graduated and moved out of town, the entire Oxford establishment moved into an old car dealership on Pharr Road. This location was simply enormous and became the literary center of Atlanta. There would be multiple books signings by famous authors daily. The little coffeshop had grown into a full-size restaurant. Individual departments had rooms as big as the original store. The owner of Oxford was trying to go toe-to-toe with the BigBoxOfBooks™ chains that had cornered him in that area.

Then Oxford became a business school case study in how not to manage growth in an economic downswing. I wasn’t around to watch the fall, but I was shocked and dismayed to hear that such an institution could be brought down so suddenly and thoroughly. Now at the original Peachtree Battle location there is a branch of an independent mini-chain ironically called Chapter 11 Books. I have no idea whether there is any association karmic-ly or otherwise with Oxford, but the name alone stands as an Ozymandias -like warning.

Nowadays, my whole family will spend several hours on a weekend night at the local BigBoxOfBooks™ thumbing through magazines, reading manga (Well, at least my son. A bookstore manga aisle is a hotter teen-dweeb spot than Xanga.), and drinking over-priced highly-caffeinated milkshakes. The experience is pleasant and relaxing. And sterile. Nothing will ever replace the charm and haphazard joy of the legendary Oxford Books.

Blatant Comment Whoring™: What is or was your favorite bookstore?

Update: I've added this picture of the tower at Berkeley because I ran across it going through old photos. Unfortunately, I don't have picture of Cody's or Oxford.