Bisbee's last remaining bookstore is for sale

BISBEE — As best as anyone can remember, there have always been bookstores in Bisbee, even in those rough and tumble mining days of the early 1900s.

For 38 years, the flagship here was Atalanta Books and Music on Main Street.

Some remember David Ishner’s Books, the Book Stall, and even the One Book Bookstore, which stocked and sold one book, “Me ‘n Henry” by the store’s owner, Walter Swan.

Clearly, literature and the arts are important here, and in recent years the area’s readers and writers have rallied around the one bookseller left.

Welcome to Bisbee Books and Music, located in the local convention center, the old Phelps Dodge Mercantile Building at the foot of Main.

Now meet the owners, Craig Harzinski and Ken Mertes, because they have news:

The last remaining bookstore in Bisbee is for sale.

“For us it’s just time,” Harzinski said this week. “Five or six years ago, after we’d moved to Arizona, we had pretty much convinced ourselves it was time to retire. We didn’t, obviously. We bought a bookstore, instead, but now it’s time to find someone who can make it a better store than we can.”

They will definitely be missed.

“Craig and Ken have been great for all of us, especially our local writers,” said Ken Lamberton, author of “Chasing Arizona.” “Our books are on their shelves. They host readings almost every weekend. If you like being around books and book people, their store is as good as it gets.”

If Harzinski and Mertes are lucky, they will find buyers similar to themselves.

A pair of transplants from Chicago, they had one eye on retirement and the other on the idea of owning a small restaurant when they arrived in Sierra Vista in 2018.

Then, that fall, they learned a business had gone on the market in Bisbee. A bookstore. For reasons they still don’t understand today, it called to them.

“We’d never worked in retail and we knew next to nothing about the book business,” Mertes recalled. “We loved Bisbee, though. I think that was the thing.”

As discussions progressed with bookstore owner Carol Lokey, their doubts began to slip away.

Lokey offered to help them get started with the book side of the business. Her friend, musician Robert Voss, helped them organize the music counter.

The purchase closed on Nov. 22, 2018, and the two partners hit the ground learning.

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“One thing we learned right off, people in Bisbee love helping people,” Harzinski said. “We learned from our customers, what they like and what they look for. We learned that people shouldn’t buy a guitar for somebody else, since touch is so important. It’s amazing what you can learn if you listen.”

Five years later, Bisbee Books is the hub of literary life in Bisbee and the busiest bookshop for 50 miles in each direction.

The store hosts a Bisbee Artist Series on weekends, featuring authors, artists and artisans working in the area. It features books by area authors and cookbooks by local chefs. There is a section of banned books; stories by and about the people of Ukraine; tales of ghosts and the paranormal.

Fans of author J.A. Jance, a graduate of Bisbee High, will find all 20 books in her Joanna Brady series on one of the J.A. Jance shelves.

“People come in all the time wanting to talk about the characters in her books,” Harzinski said. “We can do that now.”

Local mining? Check. Southwest history? Check.

Most of all, Bisbee Books has found ways to be Bisbee, an eclectic mix of people with wide-ranging interests and lifestyles.

Case in point: It is the only store in the area that sells North American wooden flutes, high spirit flutes favored by those playing Native American music.

Other sidelines now include art supplies, vinyl records and glass jewelry, but books pay the rent.

While their store is now on the market, chances are the partners will be there a while.

“We’re proud of what we’ve done,” Mertes explained. “We think we’ve brought life to the convention center and the people in town by having a bookstore here. For everybody’s sake, it’s important to find the right new owners, so if it takes a while? That’s OK. We like it here.”

Footnotes

Author John P. Langellier will discuss his life and his latest book, “More Work Than Glory,” when he visits Bisbee Books and Music, at 2 Main Street, this Sunday, Jan. 28. The program begins at 11 a.m. and is part of the bookstore’s Bisbee Artist Series. “More Work Than Glory” looks at the Buffalo Soldiers, the all-Black cavalry division that once patrolled Southern Arizona as part of the U.S. Army. Learn more at tucne.ws/1p7n.

University of Arizona Press will honor poet Simon J. Ortiz and his first collection of poems in 20 years on Tuesday, Jan. 30. “Light As Light” is now available from UA Press. Tuesday’s program will feature a conversation between Ortiz and Ofelia Zepeda. The program begins at 6 p.m. in the Special Collections Reading Room at the UA Library, 1510 E. University Blvd. For more information, visit tucne.ws/1p7o.

The Tucson Festival of Books will present author Philip Gefter Feb. 21 at the Loft Cinema. His next book, “Cocktails with George and Martha,” will revisit the making of the movie “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” The book will be released Feb. 13 and will be on sale at the Loft, 3233 E. Speedway. The event will begin at 6 p.m. and include a showing of the movie. Get more info at tucne.ws/1p7p.