Opening a Home Away From Home in Decatur, Georgia

Throughout the NBCC's Campaign to Save the Book Review, Russ Marshalek -- who actively participated in the effort to raise awareness of what was happening at the AJC -- was also busily preparing the grand opening of Wordsmith Books' Decatur location. A week ago the doors finally opened, followed by two weekend events. Here's what Russ had to say about how that felt.

When you spend upwards of 15 hours a day in a space, with set few recurrent faces as company, you begin to think of the place, whatever it is, as home. As such, finally opening the doors to Wordsmiths Books this past weekend left me feeling oddly invaded-there were strangers in our house, in our kitchen, using our bathrooms, touching our stuff. My ADD and OCD were battling each other over which would cause me to freak out first.

That’s not something that tends to go over very well in a retail environment, though-greeting your first customer with a forked “um, may I HELP YOU?” phrased to sound akin to a teenager whose mom has just invaded their room without knocking. Like that teenager’s room, with the My Chemical Romance poster hung in just the right position above the bed, we at Wordsmiths Books have spent the past few months placing everything-every book, every chair, every floor lamp-in exactly the right place, trying to find furniture to match the books to match the concept of what Wordsmiths Books is - the bookstore that we, the employees, the ones that in normal retail environments are faceless cogs in the shopping-cart machine but who, in the strange creature that is a book store, become sort-of celebrities, those whose recommendations and opinions are valued and trusted, would want to spend a great deal of time in. And it’s either dumb luck, utter fate or a combination of both that we have been spending a mass amount of time here, and have crafted a space which, to my aching eyes and my sleep-deficient brain, feels more like home than my apartment (which, coincidentally, I can see from the store).

When 9 A.M. last Friday morning rolled around, the clouds didn’t part, traffic didn’t stop, there was no brass-band fanfare to herald the coming of this bookstore that’s been like birthing a child for all involved. There was no one waiting outside those front doors to declare us heroes in the field of bookselling for the love, the care, the concern taken to make sure our reading room/gallery area felt warm, comforting, cozy enough to doze off in (clutching a book, naturally) or the amount of effort taken to select each book and craft proper section headings that wouldn’t fall into the traps of those bookstores with senseless, ill-fit sections.

However, as the customers began to trickle in over our Grand Opening weekend, and the mild (and weird) feeling of invasion began to pass, a few new feelings began to emanate-pride, joy, excitement. I may be known as the resident king of unabashed, unbridled enthusiasm (read my blog post discussing my love for Marisha Pessl to get an idea), but every person who works here was literally glowing with happiness by the time noon on Friday rolled around-and it only got better as the weekend progressed. Customers were spilling over with joy at the fact that we’re here, doing “this bookstore thing” the way that we are-because, apparently, it’s not an esoteric or proprietary idea, this one of making a comfy, inviting, welcoming book shop that’s as much a spend-the-day destination as it is a retail establishment. It was initially surprising to see folks stay for the entire two hours between our Saturday afternoon performance by Poetry Atlanta (featuring local spoken word blues-folkie legend Kodac Harrison) and Saturday night’s hilarious reading with Jack Pendarvis and Sheri Jospeh, but by Sunday afternoon, when those same faces had been around for brunch and post-lunch mimosas with Shauna Seliy, it wasn’t shocking to see them smiling into the evening’s closing acoustic performance by The Swear’s Elizabeth Elkins.

In fact, the enthusiasm of our customers (who are, in fact, our neighbors, our friends, the guy at Starbucks, the catering manager at the burrito place down the street) may nearly have surpassed our own. I’m walking right into a trap of cloying sentimentality when I say this, but I don’t know how to avoid it-it’s now as much everyone else’s home as it is ours. And it’s still just as wonderfully comfy.

--Russ Marshalek