South Gate Book Store was the first place I bought a regular book. Not a comic book, mind you. A real paperback book. It was Ernest K. Gann's FATE IS THE HUNTER. I had seen the film, loosely based on the book, at the Vogue Theater and wanted to read the book itself, which I had read was far superior to the movie.
South Gate Book Store was located on Tweedy Blvd. I would like to show you an image of that store front, but it no longer exists. In fact the entire block where it was located is gone, replaced by a Lucky Super Market parking lot. Inside the book is a gold, embossed sticker:
The exact address was 4167 Tweedy. The LO 9-1265 was the phone number of the store.
After I met Daylin Butler at East LAJC, we would often drive to West Hollywood to the Pickwick Book Shop located there.
On a Friday or Saturday evening, we'd spend at least a couple of hours pouring through the stacks of books carried by the store. The above photo is what the current location looks like. About all that is familiar to me now is that the book shop was two stories.
Pickwick Book Shops were located all over Southern California, as the bookmark below indicates:
When mom moved to San Pedro after I left for Air Force OTS, the Palos Verdes Peninsula Center was quite a bit closer, so I shopped for books there rather than drive to West Hollywood.
Of course, while in college, I'd also buy books at the bookstores at East LA and Cal State Dominguez Hills. Another chain I used to buy books at, now also defunct, was B. Dalton booksellers.
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