Travel Blog

Tuesday afternoon I drove back into Philadelphia in search of a book. I parked on Sansom near Joseph Fox Bookshop (est. 1951) and was told that, because the book was soon coming out in paperback, they had not ordered any new hardcover copies.

I dashed around the corner to Barnes & Noble on Rittenhouse Square, where I heard the same story. I got back in the car and headed east across Broad, parked on 13th, and checked at Robbins Bookstore - a shadow of its former self but still alive. They didn't have it either.

My spirits remained high. I wasn't finding the book, but I was finding the bookstores, which was an improvement on my visit to New York the day before. On 5th Ave. I had looked up and seen the Scribner's lettering still brightening the south wall of its old bookshop - a sight that has made me wistful for decades. In a convenience store I had asked the location of Gotham Book Mart and received a look from a man buying chips that seemed to suggest I had wandered in from another planet. (And, from a Manhattanite's perspective, I had). He told me it had closed several years ago. Even the wonderfully cramped French bookstore in Rockefeller Plaza - a cherished pocket of France in the heart of Manhattan - had disappeared.

Back in the car, I drove to Olde City. It had been a while since I'd driven in a city not planned for automobiles, and I rolled carefully but purposefully down narrow one-way streets full of lunchtime cars and buses. At Book Trader they told me to try Joseph Fox.

More impressive than my driving, I thought, was my parking, as I managed to find a space within a block or two of every bookstore. I crossed Market and headed into Queen Village where - voila - an empty space sat waiting for me at the corner of 2nd and Bainbridge. A few doors up 2nd stood Head House Books. I walked in and saw, sitting on a display shelf, the object of my desire, its cover facing out and filled with the title: The Lost Art of Walking.