Beckham's Bookshop New Orleans

Decatur Street in New Orleans is one of the few thoroughfares in the French Quarter that isn’t pockmarked and doesn’t share the squalid conditions found on the back streets.

 

Matter of fact, this broad street has quite a few wonderful spots worth a visit, some of which I wrote of earlier:  Café du Monde, Jackson Square and the Red Slipper breakfast spot. There’s also the old Jackson Brewery, now a high-end conglomeration of shops.

 

On my last trip to New Orleans, I found a gem on Decatur Street, and what for me is a very special place, Beckham’s Bookshop.  I confess I’m addicted to bookshops, especially those dusty places that have a cluttered, backroom ambiance, with a fabulous array of used books, stacked carefully on worn and a seemingly endless array of book cases and also stacks of books on the floor by wooden chairs that creak when you sit down.  With all this and more, Beckham’s has found a proper spot near the top of my list.

 

Two older men, seated in their own creaky chairs looked me over when I walked in, or at least one of them did.  The other one was involved with a magazine and in a battle to overcome poor eyesight. The one who wasn’t involved was bald, wore glasses and had on a dress shirt and jacket.  He smiled.  I smiled.  End of conversation.

 

I looked around. At once I knew I was in a place to linger, to marvel.  Paperbacks, leather bound classics, best sellers of yesteryear.  It’s the kind of place where, no matter your level of education, you are overwhelmed with how much you don’t know and how much you want to know.  I asked myself how long has it been since I’ve read the authors of the twenties.  Too long. Then I found a biography of this and that well-known classicist, whose names I recalled.

 

You have to understand me to understand my passions.  I’m stuck in the 20s, 30s, and 40s.  Books and music. Wit as well as somber novels.  Raymond Chandler, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, to name a few. Writers and artists from their most productive years in Paris and London and New York.  I spotted a book: a bio of Dorothy Parker.  Remember her and the Algonquin Roundtable, meeting at the eponymous hotel in Manhattan?  Care to read a few lines from her pithy mind ?

 

“This wasn’t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible.  This was terrible with raisins in it.”

 

“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.”

 

“Tell him I was too fucking busy -- or vice versa.”

 

And one of my favorite bits of Parker verse:

 

By the time you swear you’re his,

Shivering and sighing.

And he vows his passion is,

Infinite, undying.

Lady make note of this—

One of you is lying.

 

I asked the clerk, Do you have any books in French?  Yes?  Plenty.  Upstairs in the back, left corner.  Ah, yes.  Books that stretch my memories of high school when I swore I would learn French, while my grades offered different options.

 

A bookstore, especially an old one, like Beckham’s, on a passible street in an old and crumbling city, is like a diamond of a thousand facets, sparkling in every direction.  A place of dreams, wrapped in clouds of self-promises.  Or maybe it’s an older woman, face streaked with ancient wrinkles, and yet whose beauty shines through the years and the pages.

 

Yes, I bought some books, a couple of them in French.  Hope undying. Vive l’espoir! Long live hope!

 

 

Chamblin Bookmine, Jacksonville, Florida

Chamblin Bookmine, Jacksonville, Florida

Last time I took you to The Inn at Ocean Springs.  Now we’ll speed across the country to more than a bookstore, a book lover’s happy dream.  Chamblin Bookmine is unlike any bookstore you’ve visited. I know you’re saying to yourself, “Yeah, sure.  A bookstore is a bookstore.”

Oh, how wrong you are, silly knave.  Think B & N is a real bookstore?  I’m not a complete snob.  I do go to B & N for a coffee and to take photos of books I can buy cheaper on Amazon.

I’ve browsed fabulous bookstores in London, attired in 19^th Century dark wood paneling and multi-levels of tomes that make you gasp.  Even strolled a few dozen times down the justly famous Charing Cross Road and trod through the many musty and narrow shelving corridors, in dozens of used bookstores.  If you get to London, try it.

See, this is not bragging.  This is called building up my creds, so when I tell you about Chamblin Bookmine, you’re more apt to place your trust in a true book lover and tread in my well-intentioned footsteps.  Do you follow?  (Pun intended)

Ok, I admit it.  You’re not a knave.  But have you been to Chamblin Bookmine?

Use your gps to find it.  Even though you can see the white concrete building from Roosevelt Highway (Hwy 17) going north, it’s a twisty, turning adventure to actually get to the front door. However the long, bold, black letters posted high on the fascia let you know you’ve arrived at book Nirvana.  Small parking lot that’s perpetually crowded.  Be prepared to be impressed. Toss that need for espresso and dark wood paneling aside.

Even a world traveler and bibliophile such as myself, who walked in expecting the all too common warehouse approach to offering unsalable books, was immediately impressed.

To my surprise, I found a beehive of fellow book lovers exchanging smiles as they passed, asking each other for directions through a seeming endless warren of narrow corridors lined with shelves so high you can barely reach and I’m 7’ 2”!   Actually I’m closer to 5’ 8”, so women who are 5’9” intimidate me.

But, enough about me. Let’s get back to the 23,000 sq. feet of books, or about half a football field. That IS intimidating.  However, have no fear, the organization is remarkable, with books of every genre, alphabetically easy to find.  Having trouble?  The counter clerks are wizards at pointing you in the right direction and the owner, Ron Chamblin is also happy to help.  He’s the one sitting at an open desk beside the clerks, peering at a computer and helping another customer find a book.

I looked for a certain southern cookbook and searched the cookbook shelves in vain.  A smart young woman at the counter steered me to a special section for ‘Southern Cooking.’  Search for that kind of prompt and knowledgeable help in a major chain bookstore. 

Mystery sections, romance, general fiction, history divided by era, science fiction, thrillers, non-fiction, poetry, wine, it’s all there.  When I say ‘section,’ I’m not speaking of an arm’s length of covers to stare at.  The history section alone has more books than most bookstores. If you plan to see everything, bring a lunch. There’s even an Erotica section.  I really didn’t find the first four books interesting.  But, I only finished reading three.

Let me give you a brief sketch of the owner, Ron Chamblin (above).  He’s a tall man, or at least taller than I am, with startling white hair, glasses and such an easy manner that when you ask him a question, you’d never know you’re imposing, while he’s busy trying to do three things at once.  He stops.  He listens with full attention and if he can’t find you a book, Google couldn’t either.

“We started Chamblin Bookmine in 1976 and now we have 23,000 sq. feet and I’m buying another 8000 sq. feet.”  He also mentions there’s a Chamblin Uptown at 215 N. Laura Street, tele 904-674-0868, which is about the same size!  Two of them together?  Football field!

I am in awe at the sheer volume of books!  Hardbounds, paperbacks, used, new, there’s no beginning and no end. So where do your get this many books?  “All kinds of sources.  We bought out five bookstores that were going out of business.”  He didn’t mention it, but Chamblin’s also buys used books as well, as the sign says outside.  To judge from the ebb and flow of customers, there is no more shortage of sources than there is a shortage of grains of sand in the ocean.

Matter of fact, when you go to checkout, the clerk will ask if you have any a book credits, meaning have you sold us any books.  The credit will be used to discount the prices of the books you’re buying.

A group of three of us went twice.  Couldn’t stay away.  Bibliophiles will have no sense of time or cost.  No telling how long we were in the Bookmine.  I only know I was happy to peel off the bills and tote my armful of wonders to the car.

Will I be back again?  Of course.  Ya gotta read, right?

http://www.chamblinbookmine.com

Finding London Bookstores! An Adventure

Besides pubs and theater, other musts for any worthwhile, thinking traveler to London, are the array of not-to-be-missed bookstores.  I’m not talking about the grab a novel newspaper stands in the airports, or the thin selection in American malls.  London is blessed with tome filled islands of wonder that lure you inside and steal your hours, soaking in the smell of printed works, reveling in the atmosphere of rebounding knowledge, in the presence of brilliant minds.  Speaking of brilliant minds, in my benevolence, as you might guess, I have a few personal treasures to share.

Foyles Books on Charing Cross Road.  Five stories high.  There are Foyles outlets all over London.  But, you’re going to Leicester Square to pick up theater tickets anyway, so why not wander down Charing Cross Road, which is noted for its array of second hand bookstores.  Forget the musty stacks for now…although they do have the charm and elegance of gray haired men, with frayed cuffs and knotted ties.   Time is short.  Let’s keep going down a few blocks and step into the Foyles flag ship.

Used books on Charing Cross Road

Teenage brothers, William and Gilbert Foyle failed their Civil Service Exams and decided to sell their textbooks.  The rest of the story reads like a script for a Hollywood movie.  Bought used textbooks, sold them for a profit.  Opened a store, outgrew it, opened another, etc.  Finally settled in the current location in 113-121 Charing Cross Road (1929!).  See, even in a depression, there are those who roll their money to the bank in wheelbarrows!  Foyles has branches all over the world, but I always prefer the original.  By the way, Foyles is still family owned and operated.  (http://www.foyles.co.uk/about-foyles)

You step through the door into the world of books.  First thought.  This shop isn’t so big. Hahahaha…you’re only in the new book section, surrounded by a few thousand selections.  Traipse upstairs, or downstairs.  There are more worlds to conquer.  Now, get to it.

Hatchard’s  has been selling books from the shop on Piccadilly since 1797!  Prime location, right next to Fortnum & Mason.  Now owned by Waterstone, Hatchard’s is still a fabulous bookstore of high, polished-wood shelving, and there’s no way I can think of stepping into the food emporium next door before I gaze over a few new titles, and browse the never-ending stacks that stretch through fiction, non-fiction, art, travel, and god only knows what else.  It’s a wonderful place to get lost in your dreams.  Hatchard’s often features book signings, with significantly famous authors.  (http://www.hatchards.co.uk)

Daunt Books, 83-84 Marylebone High Street , is not easy to find.  (http://www.dauntbooks.co.uk) By the way, the street is pronounced Mar-lee-bone.  Nearby are Marylebone Road (huge), Marylebone Rd (small), and Marylebone Street (tiny) Follow my directions closely:  Take the underground to Marylebone Tube Station. (Baker Street Station is closer, but who knew?) Get out of the underground and up to the road.  Look perplexed.  I scratch my head.  Ask a few people for directions.  Watch them scratch their heads. Unfold my map and notice that London is a tiny dot, while the rest of England unfolds endlessly.  Notice the huge Landmark Hotel.  Race inside.  Get a better map from the concierge and let him mark the spot.  Walk down Marylebone Road until I’m blocks past Madame Tussaud’s.  This isn’t turning out well.  Did the concierge say to turn at Madame Tussaud’s?  Maybe.  Memory isn’t what it used to be after that last pub.  I wander the several blocks back to Madame T’s.  Turn at the spot I think I remember and find myself on Luxborough Street.  Keep walking he said.  I had several pints of beer an hour ago.  This is beginning to be troubling.  Rain with a chance of soggy socks.

Luxborough Street is a looooong street.  I pass the point of bladder control and am headed toward the abyss of self-control.  I hurry back to the Landmark Hotel, which is several blocks behind me, but offers the only faint hope I’ve got.

The Landmark gents room is a lovely place.  All polished marble and mirrors.  I spend an hour there, holding my own, idly watching people come and go as I continue to unleash a torrent of after-market beer.

I begin again.  Past Madame Tussauds and a hard right turn.  Looks familiar.  Oh, yeah, been here before.  Seems like only moments ago.  Luxborough Street, check.  Somewhere, the hip bone has got to be connected go the thigh bone.  I run into Crawford Street.  But, since this is a T intersection, I’m faced with a dilemma.  With great trepidation (and half my brain calculating how far it is back to the Landmark), I chance a left turn.  This may be the longest walk since Chairman Mao took his first step on the thousand mile journey.

My need to find Daunt Books has changed from sunny joy, to golden rapture (at finding a men’s room), to steel gray determination, to the red heat of passion.

I once again stop and ask directions.  The lady backs off a few steps and wraps her arms protectively around her child.  It’s over there, she points and I hear the click of her heels as she speeds the kid to safety.  Was it my tone, or the perhaps the way spittle flew in wide arcs?  It’s getting dark.  If this fucking place is closed…

I catch a glimpse of heaven.  The magic words, Marylebone High Street.  I ask again, just to be sure.  Daunt Books, I say so calmly I don’t recognize my own voice.

Right over there.  The man points across the street and down about fifty paces.

I race.  Blessed sweet mother of angels, it’s open!  I gander at endlessly long oak shelves, stare up at the high gallery, peel back a few covers, browse until my eyes ache.  Find tales I simply cannot live without. Daunt Books specializes in travel, but they have everything.  Although parts of the building date to 1912, the owner and the name date only to 1990, when the shop was purchased by a former banker, James Daunt.  No matter the date or pedigree, this is another London treasure.

It’s now pitch black outside and I have no remote idea how to trek back toward any known tube stop, or bus stop, or where I might find a frightened mother and child to clear the path ahead.

Ah, but all is well.  Diagonally across the street is a championship pub. Prince Regent, reads the sign over the heavy stone front.  Better yet, the bar is not crowded and they have my favorite, DOOM Ale on tap.  It may be raining outside, but in here it’s sunny as a warm day on the beach with a bosom buddy, and the gents toilet is only a short glance from where I’m celebrating with a few pints.

Before I finish this thumbnail sketch of London booksellers, I must mention one small bookshop that never makes anyone’s list.  South Kensington Books is just steps away from the South Kensington tube stop.  It’s small, it’s independent, but two things make it really special:  price and selection.  Most of the books, which include best sellers and many prominent authors, sell for half price or less.  We’ve all seen half-price bookstores, but I’ve never seen one that grabbed me and made me walk out the door with three books under my arm.  Only an iron will and the airline’s baggage limit stopped my free-fall toward financial ruin.

Don’t for a minute think the South Kensington underground station is out of the way.  Right on the Piccadilly, District, and Circle lines.  Very artsy, quaint area surrounding the tube stop, including pubs, coffee shops, restaurants, and ice cream parlors.

As was famously said, A man who’s tired of London is tired of life.

Remember this short list of bookshops.  They’re my favorites.

The Eagle

Welcome to The Eagle

Outside, academics continue...

Note the well scorched ceiling in the RAF Bar

A corner of wartime memories

Steak 'n Kidney Pie, with chips and peas

Let the world roll by, while...

You enjoy your pint

Let’s talk about England.  Wait a sec, let’s get more specific and talk about Cambridge.  No use stopping there; let’s get down to the basics of life and talk about The Eagle, one of England’s and Cambridge’s finest pubs.  Matter of fact, we can talk about The Eagle and the basics of life in one breath, but we’ll get to that later.

Everybody know about The University of Cambridge?  I didn’t think so.  It’s only one of England’s, and the world’s most famous universities, another being Oxford.  Matter of fact The University of Cambridge is a spawn of Oxford, germinating when a group of disgruntled Oxfordsonians (my own clever word) left the older institution in disgust in 1209.  Don’t know what the arguments were.  Who can truly penetrate the snide and foggy brains of academicians (not my own clever word)?  In 1231, King Henry III granted the new university a charter. 

Not organized at all like most American universities, Cambridge is a collection of 31 colleges and over 150 departments.  With a university this ancient, you’d never guess that the last association to be granted college status was Homerton College in 2010.  Google it to read more about its lineage.

Colleges accept their own students, hire their own staff, own their own property and receive their own income. Students of a particular college live and eat there, and also meet for small group teaching sessions, known as supervisions.  Thereafter, the academic landscape broadens and students from one college may attend classes in all the colleges.  The University of Cambridge awards degrees.

Kinda cool.  Students not only end up taking classes at many colleges, but are also encouraged to attend lectures outside their fields of study, giving them glimpses of multitudinous subjects they would never have encountered in an American style institution.  Boys and girls, this is called education and you probably didn’t encounter it unless you were Ivy League.

By the way, Harvard and MIT rank right up there with Oxford and Cambridge in study after study of the world’s best.

But, enough about expanding your brain and b-o-r-i-n-g stuff like that.  Who needs it when there’s a neat place to drink beer? 

I refer, of course to a quaint spot, nestled right around the corner from the city’s bustling market square.  The Eagle pub.

Bustling is not an idle handle.  The churn of the market, the buzz of the voices, the rattle of trucks and stream of bicycles permeates the city center. Hard to distinguish whether you’re in the city or the university.  They mingle like strands of a rope. The streets run from broad and open, to narrow and tangled, as though a horse-drawn plow had run amuck.  Cars creep through this warren of streets and alleys, but pedestrians beware.  People in flowing robes ride their bikes where they damn well please.

As I was saying, near the market square sits a pub called The Eagle.  Some call it a living shrine to all that college drinking establishments should be.  Two whiskey-stained bars.  Lots of scarred-top tables.  Lots of centuries-old timber, and memorabilia galore. Also, lots to know about The Eagle besides that they serve some of the best bitter this side of heaven, an observation I don’t plan to test anytime soon.

In 1525, the site was bequeathed to Corpus Christi College and by 1667 (a year after the great fire of London) there was a tavern in the same place, called The Eagle & Child. Don’t know what happened to the Child.

Remember I said The Eagle and the basics of life are intertwined?  The Eagle is where, in the 1950’s, the discoverers of DNA, Watson and Crick, often huddled over a pint or two.

But, that’s not all that’s special about The Eagle.  In the back is the ‘RAF Bar,’ where amid the tumult and death of the Second World War, RAF and American aircrews downed their pints, sweaty and bruised from battle.  For some it was their last pint. 

The walls are plastered with aircraft photos and squadron plaques, but the real show is on the ceiling.  Blackened with the carbon from candles and cigarette lighters, you can clearly read the names and squadron numbers and aircraft types.  Mute testimony to those who, despite great odds and the constant reality of death, held the weight of our civilization on their shoulders for six long years.

The food isn’t half bad either.  The usual pub grub, but surprisingly tasty.

Just remember, when you order your first pint, The Eagle is a place to throw care and time to the winds.  Linger much longer than you’d planned.  Bring a book, or sit calmly in the courtyard and watch the unfortunates, who don’t have a brew in their hand, stroll past. There’ll be plenty of time later to wind your way through the serene, cold stone of college courtyards and visit the fabulous Cambridge bookshops, like Heffers on Trinity Street, or stop off in ‘Chocolat Chocolat’ for chocolate as you’ve never had it.

For right now, just sit back, enjoy the company of academics and tourists and the silent ghosts of aircrews who never returned.   While you’re at it, order another pint in honor of the gallant aviators!

The world's best chocolate?  I think so.

Inside Heffer's bookstore

Glimpse of a college courtyard

Punting on the River Cam

The bustling downtown market square

The market is dead  center in Cambridge

Doorway to another ancient college