As you probably know, my current Big Picture fantasy is to someday open my own bookstore. It’s on my 101 Things list, and it’s my mental Happy Place when work or family or The Boy is driving me nuts. I picture walking past the shelves of books, the comfy seating areas, the big display tables laden with books I love. I think about the things I’ll do to make reading exciting to others. If you’re talking to me and I seem out of it, that’s where I am, in my Bookstore Daydreams.
I’ve started, barely, to look into what it would take to make this a reality, and it is daunting, amazing really, how actual people, not corporations or franchises or conglomerates, become business owners. There is so much to do and learn and plan for, so much money to be saved up or gotten (somehow), so many things to think about.
I know I’m not anywhere near the stage of starting a small business. As someone who wants to open a brick-and-mortar store, not just sell my wares on the Interwebs, I know there are a lot of hurdles to jump, messy seas to navigate.
Which is why I like to dream. One of the things I like to imagine is where this Bookstore Daydream might someday live, in the real world of Long Beach, CA. So you won’t believe what I found the other week as I was out on one of my long perambulations around my neighborhood. Continue reading
Jho in The City 