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OJAI MAGAZINE | FALL 2021
Matt by KERSTIN KÜHN
T
here are few places in Ojai as iconic as Bart’s Books. After almost 60 years, the world’s selfproclaimed largest outdoor bookstore, complete with rickety shelves and signature honor box, has achieved nothing short of cult status. Thousands of book lovers make the pilgrimage to Bart’s each year to rummage through its maze of tomes in the hope of unearthing a literary treasure. Some gush about the store’s historic charm, while others complain about upgrades and prices, but to Matt Henriksen, Bart’s Books’ defiantly dispassionate general manager, it’s all the same. “Sometimes people come in and say: ‘Oh I miss the old Bart’s when it had cobwebs.’ But they’re really just feeling nostalgic about the time in their life when they came here and there were cobwebs. Nobody buys books that are covered in cobwebs.”
photo: EMMA LARKAN
Bart’s Books came to life in 1964 as the brainchild of Richard Bartinsdale (aka Bart). A veteran and avid bibliophile, he was inspired by the used bookstalls along the River Seine in Paris, France, which he had fallen in love with during World War II. He fashioned a few bookcases along the exterior of his 1930s bungalow on the corner of Matilija and Canada Streets, with coffee cans in place of a cash register allowing passersby to peruse and
Bart’s Books
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Literary
Omnivore
