Sketch of Powells reading by Shannon Wheeler, June 25, 2013

Last night I had the extraordinary privilege to read from Happy Talk at Powells Books in Portland, Oregon. It’s just about the best thing that could happen to a writer from Portland. It was a fine experience, the audience seemed to groove on the book, I was able to try out a bunch of funny voices when acting out the dialogue, and the questions were insightful. One person asked where I got my Hawaiian shirt, to which I answered, ‘A thrift shop on Sandy Boulevard,’ which actually is a sound metaphor for all my writing. The more exotic it appears, the more likely I got it from a thrift shop on Sandy Boulevard.

Wearing a Hawaiian shirt that came from a thrift shop on Sandy Boulevard

Before the reading, I was remembering the first time I went to Powells. It was the middle 1980s, and I was a kid from the suburbs who liked to ride the bus downtown on weekends to check out the used record shops. This was before Powells was as iconic as it is now. It was a bit more bohemian and low key at that time.

During that era, the rock ‘n’ roll books were by the front entrance, and rock ‘n’ roll was what I sought wherever I went. I was floored by how many rock books were on the shelves. I actually thought for a minute that the store sold nothing but rock books. I was a dumb and wishful kid, but I also had no idea that Powells was three floors and occupied a full city block (I am not sure all three floors were operational at the time.) All I knew was there were more rock books than I had ever seen.

Maybe it’s that first experience at Powells that led me to a recurring dream that comes along every few months. I’m in a dense urban area with awful traffic that goes out a peninsula. Where the peninsula ends, there’s a Powells Books with a view of the water. The reason this particular Powells is noteworthy is that it stocks books that don’t exist, masterpieces from my favorite authors that never were published. No matter the topic, this Powells has just the right book to satisfy even my most obscure curiosities. The theatre section is excellent, and in dreams, that’s where I go first.

The best part of the dream is that, with the exception of the peninsula and view of the water, Portland’s Powells Book often feels just like that!

Read my essay on the Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset on the Powells blog.

Buy my book from Powells. If you use this link, I actually get a cut of the action.