Midnight Special Bookstore Walks Off the Promenade

While a massive blizzard buried the Northeast this past holiday weekend, in southern California, Margie Ghiz, owner of Midnight Special Bookstore in Santa Monica, was weathering her own storm. In a February 17 e-mail, Ghiz told more than 4,000 customers that the store was moving out of its current 5,000-square-foot location on the Third Street Promenade on February 24. At press time, the bookstore had yet to secure a new location, but customer support is growing.

Interior of Midnight Special Bookstore on the Third Street Promenade

Ghiz explained to BTW that she didn't decide to leave her present locale on the Third Street Promenade, "the rents did. The Third Street Promenade has been taken over by chains. There's a Barnes & Noble and a Border's here. Levi Strauss will be moving here in a couple of months, and they're going to be paying $45,000 per month in rent…. They're 'billboard stores.' They write off [the rent cost] as advertising costs. But $45,000 is more than … most people earn in a year."

Until recently, Midnight Special's landlord, Walter Marks of Walter Marks Realty, had structured an agreement with Midnight Special that took a percentage of sales as rent. However, after Marks' recent retirement, his family decided that they could no longer afford to maintain this arrangement, a decision she understood, Ghiz said.

After Ghiz made the decision to leave the promenade, she began collecting e-mail addresses from those customers who wished to be notified when the bookstore moved -- over 4,000 signed up, she noted. In her e-mail, she asked customers to help support the move in anyway they could, pointing them to a "support survey" on her store's Web site.

The response, Ghiz said, has been terrific. Only two days after sending her e-mail, she received 140 replies and already 95 customers have volunteered to help the store move out of its current space. "It's been very exciting," she said. She plans to move into storage until a new retail space is found.

Ghiz noted that, considering the current political climate, she feels it's more important than ever that the Midnight Special Bookstore, which specializes in social and cultural books, reopen. In her e-mail, she wrote, "The Midnight Special not only will survive this move, we will become stronger. The future demands it!" --David Grogan