Birmingham Photo of the Day (80): Paris Bookstall Protest in 1971

I came across this photo on the Alabama Archives site as linked below; that page has the following description of the event in April 1971:

"Christian demonstrators marching on the sidewalk in front of the Paris Bookstall, an adult bookstore in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. They are holding up their index fingers to mean "One Way / Jesus Way" (the slogan on a poster used by the same demonstrators at a later event)."

Well, I thought, this one should be interesting to research. And so it was...

Birmingham has had its share of adult bookstores and theaters over the years and Paris Bookstall was one. The business was operated at 2125 Fifth Avenue North beginning in 1969 by Chester McKinney, who also managed the Pussy Cat Adult Theatre at 7610 First Avenue North. More about that facility momentarily.

On February 26, 1970, in a case in Mobile, the Alabama Circuit Court declared a magazine called "New Directions" to be obscene. On March 10 a state attorney and state investigator delivered a letter to McKinney informing him of the the Mobile court decree. On March 31 the two men returned to the store and purchased a copy of the magazine. McKinney was charged and convicted of selling obscene material in a jury trial. He appealed to the state Criminal Court of Appeals, which upheld the conviction. McKinney then appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court rulings on May 9, 1974, and denied McKinney's request for a rehearing.

He did not stop there, however; the U.S. Supreme Court took the case and heard arguments on December 15, 1975, and rendered a decision on March 23 the following year. Justice William Rehnquist delivered the court's verdict: "We reverse." McKinney had been convicted of selling material judicially declared obscene by the court in Mobile but had not been allowed at his own trial to litigate the obscenity of "New Directions". Bill Baxley was Alabama Attorney General at this time.

How much longer the Paris Bookstall operated after this decision I have been unable to discover. McKinney seems to have kept it going for some years despite the protests and court cases.

Oh, about that Pussy Cat Adult Theatre. In April, May, July and August 1971 a city police sergeant purchased tickets and viewed the adult films "Vice Hustler", "Dead Eye Dick", "Love on a Mountain", and "Fantasy of Love" as well as various short films. McKinney was charged with violations of a municipal ordinance against "knowingly exhibiting obscene color motion picture films." His trial court convictions were upheld by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals on October 29, 1973. I've yet to find what happened after that decision; perhaps McKinney paid a fine and devoted his resources to fighting the "New Directions" case.

You can read the--uh--juicy details of the court cases here and here.

Recent efforts to fight adult bookstores and theaters in East Lake are described here and here.

The Paris Bookstall sign can be seen down the sidewalk on the right. Presumably that is the former Bankhead Hotel, now the Bankhead Towers in the background. 

Photo by Ralph Farrow, April 1971

Source: Alabama Dept of Archives and History Digital Collections

A Visit to Gibson's Bookstore in Owens Cross Roads

Sometimes you find a bookstore in a very unexpected place, and that happened to my younger brother Richard and I back in August when we were tooling around north Alabama heading to Scottsboro. In a Google search I had run across something called West Station Antiques and Gibson's Books in Owens Cross Roads, so naturally we decided to check it out.

We arrived around one on a very hot Friday afternoon. The business is located in a converted garage and has no air conditioning. Co-owner Lonnie Gibson, who told us the shop had once been located in Madison, kindly turned on some more fans for us after we came in. 

Despite the heat, Richard and I perused the packed shelves for an hour or so. We both purchased some items. I picked up two collections of short stories by H. E. Francis, an Alabama author, and some old Huntsville postcards.  

As you can see from the photos below, the store is crammed with all sorts of goodies. We would like to have stayed longer, but decided to seek the comfort of an air conditioned car and hit the road for Scottsboro. i'll be doing a post on that portion of the trip soon. We hope to return to Gibson's in the winter--on a cloudy day!

Much of the store's inventory and more can be searched on their website. Gibson's can also be found on Facebook and Instagram. The store has a "Large Selection of General Interest Books as well as Magazines, Sheet Music, Postcards and other paper items." That's an understatement!

More comments are below some of the photographs. All photos are mine unless otherwise noted. 

That sign on the wall by the window reads "Town of OCR/Hornbuckle Garage/1950's". There is a Hornbuckle Auto Detailing business in Huntsville on Highway 53; I wonder if there's any connection. 

Books, books, books & other goodies everywhere....

That's younger brother Richard in the background. We've wandered through many bookstores together over the years; Gibson's is one of the most interesting.

I spent some time on this aisle, which had lots of fiction and poetry.

This young lady watches over the inventory.

I found the two H.E. Francis short story collections in this section, which I examined carefully. I found many other items of interest in the shop, but these days I try to restrain myself when i enter a bookstore. Sometimes I succeed. 

The business occupies two rooms. The books, postcards and a lot of miscellaneous material are in the larger and the "antiques" portion is in the smaller. 

Another look at the front of Gibson's taken by Brian Stansberry

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Deb's Bookstore in Cullman

I always enjoy checking out bookstores when I travel, and recently I stopped at one in Cullman. Brother Richard and I had visited this one a few years ago, but I hadn't been back since. One day as I headed home from mom's in Huntsville, I passed by, so....

As you can see from the photos below, the place is large and packed. There are sections for biographies, non-fiction, self-help and such, but most of the inventory is fiction. Lots of fiction. There are large sections for romances, science fiction and fantasy, and --unusually--westerns. Louis L'Amour has his own section, as do Steven King, Clive Cussler, James Patterson, Stuart Woods, and others.  

The store had a website that was really just an online billboard with a video tour; it's no longer active. The Facebook page still exists. You'll just have to make a trip yourself....

Oh, the place is for sale. The owner informed me she's retiring this year and wants to sell. The price includes the building, inventory, computer system, a large parking lot and fifteen years worth of customer goodwill. 

Hmmm...

UPDATE 26 June 2021

I stopped in again and the place has indeed sold and is operating under a new name, Camelot Books and Comics. You can see a couple of signs at the end. For the most part, nothing has changed about the inventory as described above, which consist of some 250,000 items! 

Elegy for a Small Pelham Bookstore

Back in 2015 I did a couple of posts on bookmarks and business cards related to Alabama bookstores. In the second one I included a card for Betty's Books in Pelham. Mostly a used paperback store, Betty's Books opened sometime in the 1990's. I remember visiting once before the store relocated to a small commercial area across U.S. 31 from its original place. Seems like I went to the new location once as well.

The store changed ownership and became Books Etc. I visited that incarnation several times and always found something to buy. The place was small but packed with goodies. Unfortunately, Books Etc has recently closed, and I'll miss knowing it's there when I want to stop by.

Son Amos worked at that Food World, which opened in 1974, during part of his high school years. Eventually the store closed, and a few years ago was replaced by a Mi Pueblo Supermarket.

The sign says "New and Used Book Exchange" but most of the inventory was used books  and those were mostly trade and mass market paperbacks. The store did have large selections of classics, westerns, science fiction, and horror in addition to the usual contemporary fiction and romances. 

At one time Books Etc also occupied the storefront to the left of this photo, but I started going just after the owner had given up that space.

Unfortunately, I totally missed that "Big Sale"!

A Quick Visit to Mobile, Alabama (2)

Back in July we visited Mobile for a family gathering. We stayed at the Battle House Hotel and ventured up and down Dauphin Street when we had a chance and despite the heat. I covered some of what we saw in an earlier post. Here are some more of the sites along one of the city's iconic streets.

Cathedral Square is a city park across the street from the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, which was built between 1850 and 1884. The Square was once a Catholic Cemetery but most graves were moved in 1819.

Located across another street from Cathedral Square is the Bishop Portier House. Mobile's first Roman Catholic Bishop Michael Portier lived here from 1834 until 1859.

 

These two institutions are across the street from Cathedral Square. I found the juxtaposition interesting. More information can be found at the Mobile Arts Council web site and a 2009 article about the Police Museum. 

 

 

We could not resist getting something salty and something sweet from this business in operation since 1947.

 

 

I'm always ready to visit local bookstores, and several of us made it to Bienville Books just across from the Square on Dauphin Street. Book lovers can spend some serious browsing time in this two-story haven. I especially enjoyed the local history section.

 

 

 

 

 

We were all excited to come across this classic American icon from the film A Christmas Story in the barber shop across the street from the Battle House.

 

 

More than 25 sites now make up the Alabama Oyster Trail. Painted by local artists, the statues are meant to highlight restoration efforts in Mobile Bay.  

 

 

Beautiful Bienville Square is near the hotel. The entire block is now the park, but it started out as a plot of land deeded by the U.S. government to the city if used as a park. Over the years the city purchased the remaining land in the block and owned it all by 1849. At one time the Spanish Hospital stood in this block. The Square is named for the city's founder.

Even the squirrels seemed to be feeling the heat that day

 

This building near the hotel is another example of the wonderful architecture being restored in that part of Mobile.

 

 

 

Opened in January 1927, the Saenger Theatre was the 61st facility in a chain throughout the South started by two brothers in New Orleans. The theater was built to resemble opera houses in Europe. Like so many theaters built in that era, the Saenger had many uses over the years and faced imminent destruction in 1970. Luckily the Saenger survived to entertain another day.