A Warm Reception for Bradbury, New Fahrenheit 451

Like a medieval herald, an employee of Fahrenheit 451 bookstore preceded the white-haired gentleman with the horn-rimmed glasses through the open double doors: “And now, Ray Bradbury,” he announced, as customers broke into a spontaneous round of applause.

“Am I blushing?” joked a beaming Bradbury, greeting store employees manning the cash registers and inquiring, “Where are you going to put me?”

The occasion was the grand opening last Saturday of the new Fahrenheit 451 on South Coast Highway, not to be confused with the old Fahrenheit 451 across the street.

After 23 years as one of Orange County’s best-known independent bookstores, the funky little Laguna literary landmark has gone upscale, moving into grander, more spacious quarters in a mini shopping mall.

And who better to have as guest of honor than the man whose classic 1953 novel about book burning gave the store its name?

Seated on the sunny patio outside the store before signing copies of his books for a long line of fans, Bradbury recalled coming down to Laguna the week the original store opened in 1968.

But the famed science fiction writer, who also has bookstores in Paris and Rome named after “Fahrenheit 451,” is certainly not one to dwell on the past.

“It’s a nice-looking store and it’s got this, “ said Bradbury, surveying the dozen tables on the tiled patio overlooking the busy sidewalk. “This is a reader’s paradise. You can buy a book and come out and talk literature, so I’m very happy for them.”

Bradbury was referring to Dorothy and Kenneth Ibsen, who bought Fahrenheit 451 in 1988.

The Ibsens--she’s a former mechanical engineer; he’s a professor of biochemistry at UC Irvine Medical School--plan to carry on the bookstore’s tradition as a literary gathering place and outlet for the kinds of books and magazines often not available in chain bookstores.

But in changing locations, they are offering what store manager Dorothy Ibsen calls “a new interpretation of Fahrenheit 451 for the 21st Century.”

“The old store was started in the ‘60s in response to that very vital age when there were a lot of new things going on,” she said. “A lot of people had suggested if we ever redid the store we would have to re-create it; it would have to be the same, feel the same. But the thing is we’re not responding to the ‘60s anymore.”

Instead of trying to duplicate the old store, she said, “I’m listening to what people are talking about now and wanting now. People are very spiritual now, especially the young people, and yet I don’t want it to be strictly a New Age bookstore. I want it to be a place where people can try a lot of different paths. It’s a very contemporary type of place, but a really exciting, vibrant pace.”

Indeed, as she says, “there’s nothing like it in Laguna.”

From the lavender and beige walls to the rosewood bookcases, it is a warm and inviting place to browse--and to stick around for a while.

The new store is not only four times bigger with double the book inventory of the old one, but it boasts a cappuccino bar that offers 48 different kinds of whole bean coffees and an array of gourmet pastries.

The food and drink can either be taken on the patio or inside on one of seven tables next to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sidewalk. (Each table top was designed and painted by a store employee who has offered his or her interpretation of the meaning Fahrenheit 451. One table top, for example, features an anti-book-burning symbol with a poem written around the edge.)

Not everything was in place for the grand opening, however. A full-length bar for cappuccino drinkers on a balcony had yet to be installed and, as Bradbury signed books out front, workers were just putting up the new purple and hot pink neon Fahrenheit 451 sign on the wall behind the checkout area.

In keeping with the old bookstore’s tradition as a gathering place, the Ibsens will be offering poetry readings, live music and book signings, in addition to displaying the works of local artists.

Unlike the old store, the new one is fully computerized--from accounting and inventory control to a book location system that updates new titles every week and allows employees to do more special ordering. The Ibsens have also gone from the three main book distributors that the previous manager had worked with to dealing with more than 600 vendors (distributors, publishers and individuals).

With the advent of large supermarket-style bookstore operations, Ibsen said, the whole book scene is changing.

“If you’re concerned about price, you can go and get a discount,” she said, “but it’s not a neighborhood situation the way we are where we’re tied with the people and the community.”

And, she said, “you’re not going to have a place to sit and talk to your neighbors and sip cappuccino.”

Ibsen said a lot of longtime customers have told her that they hate to see the end of the old store, that cozy yet cramped little shop one visitor--acclaimed British mystery writer P.D. James--described as “my idea of a perfect bookstore.”

“I have to grab them and say I too share that feeling,” said Ibsen, adding, however, that there was no way the old store could remain profitable.

But the sentimental customers who remember the old store where former beat poet Allen Ginsberg once held forth on everything from his view of the English language to nuclear arms control and where former Yippie leader Jerry Rubin once did a book signing--can rest easy.

The old Fahrenheit 451 will continue operating across the street as Fahrenheit 451 Used Books.