Bookstore Turning a Page

Margie Ghiz has always been quick to run the reality check; to work to keep things in perspective. So the pep talk she gave her staff just the other morning at Midnight Special Bookstore, only days after the store announced it would be forced to move from its Third Street Promenade location, was one she had already given herself--more than once over the last few days.

Moments before starting their business day, Ghiz informally corrals the early shift staff and lays it out for them: “OK, guys, I was looking through the paper this morning and lots of people died. We just have to keep what’s happening to us in perspective. While all this craziness is going on everywhere else, we’ve got to remember what our purpose is in the first place. That will keep us focused.”

From spontaneous mosh pit to political megaphone, Midnight Special has been an organic bulletin board of sorts. Known as much for its progressive politics as its far-reaching community service, Midnight Special has long been an advocate and an anchor--a humming community nexus when the notion of community has become increasingly difficult to define.

Like many an independent bookseller who has weathered shifts in both tastes and economics, Ghiz has war stories to tell: Moves. The chains. The mega-chains. The Internet. “But this one makes me sad,” she says, sinking into her desk chair in her small book- and snapshot-lined office.

For the last 10 of its 30 years in existence, Midnight Special has ruptured, rallied and reinvented itself in this Santa Monica location, under the sturdy hand of Ghiz, her sister, Geri Silva, and their informed and opinionated staff members. But this has been the hardest blow. Just about two weeks ago, Ghiz was given notice by her landlord, Walter N. Marks Inc., that due to rising costs the store, which had been paying a reduced rent, must either pay the full cost or vacate. And, now, instead of political slogans, rhetorical questions, koans, flags or impressionistic tombstones lining the store’s huge picture window, a simple open letter informs all who walk by of its imminent departure.

Since word leaked out early this week, the phone has been ringing nonstop. Ghiz’s e-mail box is full of sympathy notes, advice, leads and questions. “It’s shocking but not surprising,” says James Fugate, co-owner of the independent EsoWon Books. “And in this economic environment, you have no idea how much it worries me. I have to work up [the nerve] to call her.”

“The funny thing,” cracks Ghiz, her spirit lightening somewhat, “many people are ... also saying, well, gee, at least you’ll be getting out of the Promenade.”

Dory Dutton, an independent publisher’s representative and part of the Southern California bookselling Dutton dynasty, has heard that quip, but she is feeling guarded about making light just yet. “My worry is that she will not find a place adequate for what her vision is. I don’t know how she can take a step backward,” says Dutton.

A High-Profile Stage

That Midnight Special is facing an uncertain future points to something gone askew--if not in the culture, within our thinking, says Dutton. “We will spend a little bit more to shop and buy our groceries at Gelson’s or buy the best coffee. With books, people have to start thinking the same way. She’s one of the last independents left on the Promenade and the ... playing field isn’t level.”

Despite its incongruity, for better or worse, the Third Street Promenade has offered Ghiz a high-profile stage for a multidiscipline sort of street theater. Tourists, residents, merchants could always be inspired or incensed by what provocative material Ghiz and her staff might post in their windows, what world event they might decide to deconstruct, what panel she might convene. “I could put any idea out there. I never held back. And more important, it worked.”

After Sept. 11, Ghiz recalls, a customer drove in from Silver Lake. Confused, rattled, he didn’t know what he was looking for, “just wanted to talk,” but knew he might find it there. “People just kept coming in ... looking for books on Islam. On the Middle East. We already had them. Oftentimes, you worry, ‘Are we just preaching to the choir?’ But there are times, we’ve realized, we’ve reached much further than that.”

One is probably, indeed, more apt to find the already converted perusing the shelves--activist/actor Tim Robbins or politician Tom Hayden and urban historian Mike Davis are counted among the regulars. But sometimes, says Ghiz, she encounters the unexpected. “I can’t tell you how surprised I was to see Richard Riordan in here. That’s when the Robbie Conal poster [targeting Riordan]--’Tunnel Vision’--was up. And he even came back!”

Bottom line: A good bookstore is a good bookstore, says novelist and neighbor Dan Fante, son of L.A. chronicler John Fante. “It is the only sizable bookstore where I can walk in and the people behind the counter actually read books themselves.... “You can take the temperature of what’s going on in literature, of what’s going on in L.A. and beyond, by simply looking in the window.”

The store has always been a draw to writers--local and traveling. Octavia Butler researched the fine points of sediment and coastal formations for her “Parable of the Sower” in the stacks. When in town, Walter Mosley browses. And as lore has it, comparing notes over dinner in Mexico City, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Carlos Fuentes found they had a favorite Los Angeles bookstore in common.

Ghiz won’t take credit for that. She’s simply continuing a tradition. Midnight Special’s first incarnation was as a scruffy Venice storefront with a rickety staircase on what is now Abbot Kinney. An outgrowth of the civil rights movement teach-ins and the Vietnam War’s turmoil, the store’s purpose mirrored that of hundreds of other small, grass-roots bookstores and information centers across the country. It boasted volunteer staffs and shelves filled with alternative titles on every subject from religion and history to cultural studies, folklore and literature.

Ghiz and Silva gravitated in, looking for hard-to-find works by prominent authors--Langston Hughes and Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galleano. And somehow, 25 years later, they are still there, lingering in the aisles, discovering. By the early ‘80s, the store moved to Santa Monica’s Third Street--then a sleepy outdoor mall--carrying with it its political engagement and energy.

Ten years later, “Wally was the one who convinced me to make the move up the block,” says Ghiz, who says she couldn’t have done it without his vision and support. This space, with its vast and elegant glass, steel and cement floor, just a block and a half north of the old location, gave Ghiz the room to not only house a wide-ranging front and backlist but a cultural center, where readings, book groups, panel discussions, video screenings, writers’ workshops and poetry slams took place nightly. “I can’t imagine being without this center. It’s given us an amazing amount of exposure.”

Fostering diversity of thought and independence, says Kerry Slattery, general manager of Los Feliz’s independent Skylight Books, has been one of Midnight Special’s most important features: “[Ghiz is] willing to speak up. Sometimes it rubs people the wrong way. She takes the risk that she could lose customers, but the discussion is for people to think about things. To take risks. And it’s been really important in an area where there is a big corporate voice.”

Political Forum

None of this is lost on Santa Monica Mayor Michael Feinstein, who has been a store regular since it was located a half-block south. He often found himself pulling up a folding chair for a political forum and panel discussion. “Here, street life isn’t just tugged by Madison Avenue’s manipulation--cajoling us to buy, buy, buy, treating us only as consumer. This challenged our mind and together with our vibrant street performer presence, challenged us culturally. Knowing that it’s there has given me pride in my community. That it is as much of an asset to us as the beach or the view of the mountains. It’s fertile soil for the mind.”

Much of this is particularly sad for those who thought the store had surmounted the impossible: being sandwiched between two super-mega chains. “They’ve been really successful in kind of maintaining their autonomy against the superstore explosion,” says Mari Florence, publisher and president of L.A.-based Really Great Books. “They have a clearly defined audience, despite it being in the middle of a mall. You could have gotten the most recent Oprah Book Club selection and at the same time have the book that the lefty heard about on KPFK. And they’ll have it up front on display. They’ve been able to navigate both worlds and not just exist but thrive.”

Conal, whose sly political images have long been part of Midnight Special’s revolving agitprop windows, isn’t ready to write the eulogy yet: “We’ve all perpetrated a lot of mischief together. That place is funky soul food for us.”

As a Westsider, says Conal, “It’s kind of the center of my cultural universe right now. The force is with Margie and that it is something that is uncrushable. All the people she’s brought through that store, the kids who have worked for her. She brings all that karma with her. But if it goes anywhere east of Westwood,” where there already exists a busy alternative network of cultural and political thinkers, Conal warns, “I’m going to be sick!”

Moved by the outpouring of support, Ghiz says she’s still got a store to run, a staff to pay, books to order and shelve, customers to tend to. And most important--a ruckus to kick up. So until the spring--her deadline to move--she’s ready to get back to work. And just like that, she and the staff begin winding through their rituals. “It’s like the staff says sometimes,” Ghiz says. “ ‘Margie runs the store. But really, it’s ours.’ ”