“I’ve started to have trouble sleeping the last few nights,” says Josh Spencer, creator of the Last Bookstore in downtown L.A., laughing as he looks around at some of the empty shelves of the forthcoming Last Bookstore Studio City.
Despite the long-promised death of print, around 500,000 hand-picked books, half the number Spencer has in warehouses, are arriving at what will be his fourth store. The Studio City location will open Dec. 12 for customers enrolled in a membership program, and the grand opening is set for Dec. 14.
Spencer, 49, admits that this location came about by pure chance.
“Years ago, my wife wanted me to see a table on sale at Designer Views, a store which sells custom and imported furniture, fountains and botanic sculptures,” he says, gesturing toward metal Trojan horses, large pyramid candles and a life-size sculpture of a motorbike made of twisted vines.
Spencer’s wife, Jenna, saw that Designers View was subleasing part of its space on Lankershim Boulevard. Spencer struck a deal for 10,000 square feet and agreed to sell some Designers View items on consignment. “Everything is for sale here except the shelves,” he says.
Books and large landscape decorations might seem an unlikely pairing, but unexpected design is always part of Spencer’s plans.
“We always want something different,” he says. “We don’t like to repeat ourselves. This will be a wabi-sabi, minimal vibe. We’ll have nature sounds on the speakers more than rock music, and maybe some water fountains.”
After years as a seller on eBay, Spencer took a chance on a small shop in 2009 and then opened the Last Bookstore in the lower two floors of an old bank on Fifth and Spring streets in 2011. It became a key part of the downtown L.A. renaissance, the labyrinthine aisles crowded with people flocking to its book tunnel and cutout book hole, which quickly became Instagram-famous.
The store climbed onto “must-see” lists and became a shooting location for television shows and movies such as “Gone Girl,” yet Spencer found himself increasingly stuck in the two warehouses out of town, sorting the books that “arrived all day, every day” from donors as well as estate and library sales. “Not that I wasn’t grateful, but it was so time-consuming,” he says with a sigh.
“I created the downtown store, set it in motion, but I just haven’t been able to be there to supervise and add my two cents, so it feels less under my control. To me that now belongs more to the people and the staff there. It has a life of its own, and that’s a unique honor. It’s amazing.”
After a short time living in Oregon and opening a store in Bend, Spencer returned to Southern California. In 2021, he and Jenna opened Lost Books in Montrose, a store that is as much a plant paradise as it is a place for browsing the printed word.
Skull-Face Books & Vinyl in Honolulu, where he has family roots, followed in 2022, but he had no plans for another store — until recently.
“Barnes & Noble are opening new stores, and BookTok has pushed sales. The desire of Gen Z to have physical media is part of it too,” he says, admitting that he thought he would go out of business during the pandemic.
“Then my wife came up with the idea of curated bundles of books,” he says. “We were one of the first places to do that, at least that I know of, and within a week or two we had 2,000 orders that kept us afloat.”
Moving around the new store in his wheelchair, Spencer says they have a four-year sublease to see how things work out, but he’s clearly excited to talk about his ambitions.
A little office with large windows is going to be soundproofed and turned into a recording/podcast studio, and a rare books room will be open by appointment. The parking lot, he says, will be used for storage, inventory sorting and events (such as flea markets and $1 sales) and maybe a reading garden.
“We also get a lot of ephemera — postcards, pamphlets, letters, magazines — and we have 100 boxes of that. We’re looking to get that out to sell here, and downtown. It’s really unique, fun stuff.”
In the longer term, Spencer wants to move into publishing, but as opening day approaches, he’s simply excited to get back on the store floor, meet readers and be a daily part of what has been created here.
“Selling books is not a way to get rich. You have to really love it,” he says. “You work hard, but it’s worth it because people love books. It also offers endless creativity, if you want. Selling books by itself can be boring for me, but I like creating a space, an experience.”
