Even though the new Elliott Bay isn’t finished yet, it might be just that bookstore.

Take, as evidence, this view from the second story:

It has several elements that remind me of other bookstores I love. Wooden shelves and creaky floorboards, similar to the Book Mill in Montague, Mass. Tables of unusual choices, good for making new discoveries, like Paris’ Red Wheelbarrow.

Elliott Bay used to be located in Pioneer Square, a historic (but run-down) district in Seattle, and plenty of people were unhappy when they moved to their new location on Capitol Hill. But I don’t begrudge a bookstore doing what it needs to do to find clientele in this economy.

That said, their cafe is missing (and their old location had a great one). Their travel section is fine, but feels equally unfinished (and has a few too many copies of guides from the Travel Company That Shall Not Be Named, and not enough from non-US publishers). Even so, there were some gems to be found.

I’ve just started At Home in Japan, which I found on an endcap in the store. It’s the story of an American woman who married a Japanese man and moved into his family’s 350-year-old farmhouse (more on the book on the Japan Times Online). It’s the start of my June reading list.

So far, Elliott Bay, so good.

]]> http://www.newelty.com/2010/06/08/shop-talk-favorite-bookstores-part-vi/feed/ 2 http://www.newelty.com/2010/05/13/shop-talk-favorite-bookstores-v/ http://www.newelty.com/2010/05/13/shop-talk-favorite-bookstores-v/#comments Thu, 13 May 2010 16:00:58 +0000 newelty http://www.newelty.com/?p=2135 One of the most depressing things about the slow, sad demise of publishing is the closings of independent bookstores.

So it amazes me when I’m in a small town and I walk into an indy that has managed to stay open…and has serious soul.

Just like countless small towns around the country, Livingston, Montana has been hit by the economic meltdown. You’d think that a tiny book business like Sax & Fryer would be recession road kill, but it’s open, and when I was there on a sunny and brisk Friday in April, it was hopping.

Specializing in western fiction, it has creaky wood floors and is the oldest store in town. Black and white photographs taken by the owner lined the walls, and when we remarked about them he got out some of his old fashioned cameras to demonstrate.

In the basement of the shop is an amazing collection of old saddles that he’s willing to show you as well. They’re all being donated to a local museum, and the one that struck me the most was one used by a member of a nearby Indian tribe a hundred years ago.

When I decided it was time to buy my books, I walked up to the counter. The owner rang up my order on an old school cash register.

“Sorry, ma’am, no credit cards here.”

Oh, and no website either. I loved every single thing about this place.

• Books piled high on square wooden tables, just calling out to you to browse.
• An owner on-site, recommending books with careful consideration.
• An enticing front door and window display (and extra points if it’s the perfect shade of red):

Welcome to the Red Wheelbarrow, a little treat of an English-language bookstore in the Marais, my favorite shopping district in Paris. (And yours, too, if your pocketbook skews more to funky finds than haute couture.)

Their website is pretty minimal–a commonality I noticed with Cloud & Leaf in Manzanita (one of the recommended stops on the Oregon Coast), although maybe not as severe. I like the Luddite spirit of these book shops, where the creaky shelves of books feel hand-selected.

During my visit to the store, the owner was trying to track down every last copy of the final Harry Potter book to satiate the demand of the English-speaking populace of Paris. She had enough time, though, to heartily recommend The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which allowed me to revisit Paris via its pages even after I left.

While discussing English-language bookstores in the heart of Paris, it’s also worth mentioning Shakespeare & Company. Personally, I find the best thing about this place is the (formidable) history, not the shopping experience. Every time I’ve been in there, it’s seemed overrun with tourists (of which, of course, I’m one).

Still, as a fan of Djuna Barnes and the other Left Bank writers of the black-and-white era of Paris, I had to make the pilgrimage. My suggestion for if you do buy a book there: Ask them to stamp it. The stamp makes even a cheap paperback seem infused with literary history.

But if you want to seriously browse and find books you didn’t know you needed, stick with the Red Wheelbarrow. And if you want to read the store’s namesake poem by William Carlos Williams, go right ahead.

Best bookstore slogan ever: Books you don’t need in a place you can’t find.

Back when I was a starving student, I’d camp out in the coffee shop of the Book Mill, located in Montague, Mass. During one particularly broke period, I would longingly visit a book I wanted on a regular basis. The owner noticed–and gave it to me.

How awesome is that? The Book Mill was the place that instilled in me a love of great old book shops and an endearing respect for any bookshop owner who can make it work.

Have you ever revisited a  book or movie you loved when you were young…and then had it  slowly dawn on you that it’s not quite the wonderful thing you remember? That you had remembered it through a sentimental haze?

I revisited the Book Mill a couple of years ago, and it was just as good as it was in my memory.

A bookstore in a creaky grist mill from the 1800s, located right above a river, filled with dusty chairs that you could spend a day in. Coffee shop filled with sunlight, located down a twisting road just outside a tiny New England town. Great books. What’s better than that?

P.S. The photos above are from an excellent photo tour on Publishers Weekly’s site by Allison Morris. Go check it out.

P.P.S. I love the set of driving directions on their website, explaining why your GPS will not help you find the Book Mill:

How to Find Us - Wander up county roads and you will find the Bookmill… but the chances are infinitely better if you do not use your GPS or even accept directions from the usual online sources. “They” don’t know that there’s a bridge out near here (a bridge that will never be repaired) and they send you by crazy routes anyway.

And it’s absolutely true.

Getting There

Chances are, if you’re heading to the north Oregon Coast from anywhere but the south Oregon Coast, you’ll start in Portland, which is 2.5 hours away. You’ll probably want a good dinner for your trip to the coast, since the only landmarks between Portland and the Pacific are a few sad truck stops and a corn maze.

Dinner at Imbrie Hall

Highway 26 connects Portland to the coast.  A funky, popular, Oregon-to-its-core chain of pubs named McMenamins has an excellent joint just west of Portland. It’s an easy exit (#62) and return to the highway, but it feels like miles away and your first step towards the coast.

Cornelius Pass Roadhouse faces the street with a Victorian home, but tucked behind is Imbrie Hall, a converted barn decorated with Dutch street signs.

The entire enterprise sits on a large parcel of land dotted with gray clapboard buildings and Christmas lights. The facilities are often booked for weddings, for the bride who likes the smell of hops wafting over from the distillery during her big day.

The View from Highway 101

Back on Highway 26, it’s a straight shot until the coast, where you turn south onto highway 101 towards Cannon Beach and Manzanita.

If you’re traveling to the coast from mid-October to mid-May, most of your trip will be in pitch darkness and most likely in rain, fog, snow (Highway 26 passes over some coastal peaks), or some combination thereof. It’s possible you’ll see an elk.

But if you’re driving this route during the summer months, you can expect daylight until 9 p.m. If it’s light, plan to pull over at one of the impressive pull-out viewpoints on the way, built during the WPA era.

My favorite is the pullout just north of Manzania, where you can see the town’s beaches from a staggering height–and you can cross-check the view against how it looked in 1943.

Checking in to the Coast Cabins

Some people like to wake up in the morning, throw aside the curtains, and see the ocean. Me, I’d trade the view for all the comforts I don’t have at home, plus a modern design sensibility and possibly some fixtures imported from Europe. That’s why the Coast Cabins are a winner.

Even though they’re up the street from the beach, these cabins are like a boutique hotel in the middle of Manzanita. Each cabin stands apart from the others, including this two-story number that peeks out over the trees and stares down Laneda Avenue, the town’s main drag.

The Coast Cabins aren’t cheap–we’re talking $200+ a night, and they have an insane 14-day cancellation policy because, well, they can.

If you need a true budget option, I have one word for you: Yurt. Truly, I didn’t know what a yurt was before moving to the Pacific Northwest, but essentially, it s a round tent-cabin. You can rent your yurt–and book them ahead of time online–at Nehalem Bay State Park (located on the southern end of Manzanita) for $27 bucks a night.

The Next Morning: Coffee (of Course), a Beach Walk, and Book Shopping

Here’s the reason why I’m not concerned with a beachfront view. Because after popping in to Manzanita Espresso for your to-go coffee and treat, you’ll walk down Laneda until you hit Manzanita beach. You’ll enjoy this view as you take the obligatory morning beach walk, noticing that every single local is doing the same and with good reason. This is the view looking south toward Nehalem Bay:

In this view, looking north, you are looking at the mountainside where you stopped at the recommended Manzanita overlook on highway 101:

Beach-walk for as long as you like (and if you brought a dog to enjoy dog-heaven out here, please, for god’s sake, clean up after it with the bags provided by the town).

Afterwards, wander back up to Laneda and peruse the shops you missed along the way, especially the single best bookstore on the coast: Cloud & Leaf.

The owner, Jodie, used to work at Powell’s, the Portland institution (and another favorite bookstore of mine). While the store gets very crowded during the peak season because of its tiny size, Jodie never caters to the beach-book-buying crowd.

Her selections are really just the best books around. You’ll find McSweeney’s and Penguin Classic editions, but not a single copy of Cosmo.

I love this bookstore. I am in love with this bookstore. I love the little hand-written cards on all the hand-selected books. I love it so much that I am conflicted about publicizing it.

All I ask that is if you go, buy good books and make room for everyone else in the store. And please leave your cell phone OFF.

Choose Your Own Adventure: Short Sands or Indian Beach?

From this point on, you have a major decision to make about where to spend your afternoon: Short Sands Beach (about 7 minutes north of Manzanita), or Indian Beach (about 20 minutes north).

Let’s be real: If it’s summer on the weekend, both of these gorgeous beaches will be extremely crowded (by Oregon standards). If you’re crowd-averse, you can delay your Manzanita beach walk (which never gets too crowded, because of its sheer size) and go north earlier in the day.

Also, go ahead and wear your swimsuit and a bring a beach towel for sunbathing if the weather is warm, but don’t plan to get into the water. It’s only 60 degrees on a good day.

Indian Beach in Ecola State Park

If you fancy a hike–and by that, I mean a real hike, with precipitous drop-offs as you walk on a trail that winds along a cliff’s edge–Indian Beach is the way to go. Located in Ecola State Park in nearby Cannon Beach, it’s worth the time you’ll spend waiting in a line of cars to pay your nominal fee to enter.

It’s worth noting that Cannon Beach is a place that everyone talks about. It has the world-famous Haystack Rock, which–to me–was just a giant, um, rock. Shaped like a haystack. Not so exciting. But people familiar with the coast will probably ask if you’ve seen it, so if you care about that, consider yourself warned.

Cannon Beach also has a much-more-commercial-than-Manzanita downtown. It’s worth avoiding, unless you need a $2,000 painting of a dolphin swimming in the moonlight. (And if so, you’re reading the wrong blog.)

Back to Ecola. Having made it into the park, if you head out on the cliffside trails, you’ll be rewarded with views like this one:

If you’re heading for Indian Beach and need food first, the Lumberyard on the north side of Cannon Beach, not far from the road to Ecola State Park, is a favorite.

Short Sands a.k.a. Shorty’s a.k.a. Oswald West State Park

Oswald West is a hero, since because of him, Oregon’s beaches are open to everyone, unlike California’s.

A visit to Oswald West State Park goes like this:

• Hunt for parking
• Take a trail down to the water through immense forest
• Nod to the surfers coming up and down the trail (pulling over for politeness’ sake and letting them pass you with their heavy boards)
• Be greeted with an immense view of a spectacular, protected cove, rumored to be a smuggler’s port back in the day
• Appreciate said crazy surfers as they brave the waves in full-protection wetsuits because it’s so damn cold, even in summer

If you go the Shorty’s route, stop in Manzanita’s Bread & Ocean before you head out for a great $9 to-go box sandwich lunch, complete with cookie.

Pizza!

After all that beachy, hikey activity, pizza hits the spot. Back in Manzanita, Marzano’s is excellent. It has a  laid-back vibe (unlike the recommended-for-lunch Bread & Ocean, which is reservations-only for dinner). Marzano’s is low-key, but still nicer than the average pizza place:

The Next Morning: Brunch of the Gods and Saying Goodbye to the Coast–with a Trip to the Dump

Wanda’s, 5 minutes south in the town of Nehalem, is home of the a truly fantastic cinnamon-oat waffle.

Wanda’s doesn’t look like much from the outside. But their breakfast is fantastic. Need more proof?

Hello, Sunday morning:

Post-brunch, on the way back from Nehalem towards Manzanita, follow the green-and-white signs for the Community Action Recycling Team of Manzanita, a.k.a. CART’M.

Bear with me on this one. If you want to visit the north Oregon Coast as a traveler, not just a tourist (although both are OK by me), CART’M will show you Manzanita’s soul.

That soul deeply loves two things: dogs and recycling. Or better yet, dogs near recycling.

CART’M is impressive. These folks really want to get to zero waste for this area, and there’s something endearing about ordinary townspeople testing their cans to see if they’re tin or aluminum and sorting them appropriately.

They love this wildly beautiful area, and are serious about not wrecking it with giant landfills.

But they’re not too serious. Take, for example, the instructions in the newspaper-recycling area: With wild abandon, fling that newspaper way back.

It’s the most joyous dump you’ll ever visit, and very, very Oregonian.

For all the photos from the north Oregon Coast, see the full Flickr photo set:

[pictobrowser 47089776@N07 72157623436849661]

For a map of all the recommended locations, see this custom Google map:

Regarding Lia’s obsession with bookstores housed in amazing venues, I also fall prey to this preoccupation. I was recently in Argentina for–gasp–not work, and stumbled upon El Ateneo while in Buenos Aires. The bookstore was amazing. I could have lived there.

One of the things that I found interesting about this immense place is that the only books in English were two or three shelves of pulpy, Danielle Steele-type paperback beach reads. So while I so desperately wanted to say I purchased my English version of Jorge Luis Borges’ The Aleph at this book lovers’ haven, I couldn’t. Buying a John Grisham novel at El Ateneo seemed sacrilegious.

I decided on some funky postcards instead, and vowed to learn Spanish.

Like this post? Read Betty’s previous review on why Singapore Air rocks.

I am incredibly inspired by this post from Spot Cool Stuff on the world’s coolest-looking bookstores. The Selexyz Dominicanen Bookstore, in a converted 13th-century cathedral, is one I have never even heard of, but it will be a must-see for me when I make my way to Maastrict in the Netherlands.

The Dutch bookstore chain Selexyz is good even without a cathedral setting–their Amsterdam branch is my go-to place for things like Harry Potter in Dutch (a language I’m attempting to learn). The location is convenient, as  well, and right on a tram line.

For pure charm within the heart of Amsterdam, I love this corner pictured above, complete with the Athenaeum Boekhandel. That store strikes me as slightly quirkier than the Selexyz branch nearby–it’s chock full of amazing art books, postmodernist musings, and novels by an embarrassing number of authors I’ve never heard of. (You can compare my pic above to Google’s street view to decide which you like better.)

I’m also partial to the magazine shop next door, since Dutch design magazines are my weakness.