Airport Reading
What Do You Think You're Looking At? #112
This is a photo from a tweet I saw recently—just the photo.
A bookstore in a mall. Maybe some local, regional, or independent Waldenbooks clone.
But it’s not a mall, and it’s not a Waldenbooks clone. This is an airport terminal shop—in the Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport—and it’s a classic overstuffed, pack-rat’s-dream used book store!
This is a very rare breed in retail. From Atlas Obscura:
It’s likely this was the first airport-based used book store in the world when it opened in 1979, and it’s currently the only one of its kind in the United States (Another used book store, 2nd Edition Book Sellers, at Raleigh-Durham International Airport closed in 2017.)
What’s odd isn’t the store, but the location. Airport stores are almost always chains, or very bland, indistinguishable independent places (deli, convenience store—rarely anything interesting.)
The original tweet from which I learned this store exists is part of a thread which give some fun details. For example, the guy manning the checkout is Orange Mike, who goes back to the store’s opening in 1979. From the thread:
The store’s existence comes down to the airport taking bids from local bookstores to occupy the space, and accidentally including used bookstores in the list. The owner shrugged and submitted the high bid. The airport tried to stop it but after six months of legal spats failed.
I asked where the stock came from. Did people lug their used books to the airport? No. It’s a combination of ancient stock from the owner’s multiple warehouses and...the employees going to thrift stores constantly and picking up every Harry Potter and the like that they see.
This store just shouldn’t exist. The airport doesn’t want them there, it makes no revenue, they have a hard time moving product, and all of its underpaid employees are at retirement age. And yet it persists.
Here’s the first tweet, picture and everything else:
Give his fun thread a read, and if you’re ever flying through Milwaukee, check out the store!
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I resent the "flying *through* Milwaukee" ... some of us live in Wisconsin, you know, and we fly *to* Milwaukee.
But the story is great and honestly I'd never even noticed that bookstore. Will have to look for it next time I'm at MKE.
That bookstore is fantastic. My wife's parents live in Lake Forest, Il., about an hour from the Wisco border and her father, knowing I'm a bibliophile, mentioned the store on one of my first visits. So of course we went and I got more than enough used Updikes to fill my carry-on. I remember reading that the proprietor used to have a larger store in/near Chicago, but that it shuttered.
Another fun story of the store: Upon my first visit, I spotted an old, comic-y looking Wodehouse compendium behind the counter in a locked display case—the "rarity" section of the store. I thought about that book for an entire year. Then, when our annual (pre-children) Thanksgiving visit was coming up, I called up the store and spoke to Orange Mike, inquiring if the Wodehouse was still available. I described it from memory and after a few minutes, he found it, offering me a price of $100. I said I'd be there in a week to get it. When I finally arrived, he had put it in a brown paper lunch sack behind some other books behind the counter. It was finally mine!
And in true bibliophile fashion, I've never cracked the spine since purchase.