Used bookstores in Pensacola run the gamut. Fortunately, you really can find just about whatever you want no matter what kind of reader you are. Several have been in town for a long while, others are relatively new. In fact, it seems like every year or two a new used bookstore opens and another closes.
Probably the oldest used bookstore in Pensacola is Hawsey’s Index. Located at 803 Navy Blvd., just a few miles away from the Naval Air Station on the west side of town, Hawsey’s features a wide selection of used paperbacks. In addition, you can also find used CDs and movies. But books and lots of ’em are their specialty.
This is where you want to go if you’re looking for an old-fashioned bookstore. Here you will find aisles loaded with romance novels, mysteries, westerns, science fiction, etc. Because this is a navy town, there’s always a standing collection of Tom Clancy and Clancy-like books. The horror section is rather impressive, as well.
Hawsey’s also has a nice collection of magazines and pop culture books. They’ve got a section on movies and music that is surprisingly full for a small city bookstore.
In addition, Hawsey’s is a favorite for students in the know because they have an impressive collection of the classics that are studied in schools from the middle school level up to college. They’ve got some nice hardback versions of the classics as well as good little paperbacks you can slip into your back pocket. The breadth of what they’ve got is really amazing considering how little the store seems.
Hawsey’s trades books, but does not offer cash.
Hawsey’s Index: 850-453-1430.
Now if you want to go in completely the opposite direction, then try the Psychedelic Shack. There are two locations, one on the west side on the same street as Hawsey’s and one all the way over on the other side of town. The Psychedelic Shack excels in offering alternative books that deal with Wiccan, New Age, and other metaphysical concerns. In addition, the store appeals to ethnic studies and gender studies. The tie-died, 60s/70s ambience tells you all you need to know. The Shack really isn’t a bookstore, per se, but they do have a very good collection. In order to see what else you can purchase there, you’ll just have to come down and enter.
The Psychedelic Shack both buys and trades books.
The Psychedelic Shack: 850-479-9007. 850-453-3166.
Now if you really want to walk on the wild side, there is only one place to shop for books in Pensacola. Subterranean Books is located downtown at 9 East Gregory Street. It’s a small, cramped, overloaded store that reminds you of bookstores you see in movies about New York. Indeed, inside you will many books that you might expect to discover on the shelves of New York bookstore rather than the ultraconservative magnet for abortion-doctor-performing-killers that is Pensacola.
But the Anarchist’s Handbook isn’t the only thing that Subterranean the best bookstore in Pensacola. It’s the only bookstore in town where you can find books not only by but about Roland Barthes, Theodor Adorno, and Marx. You can find books about postmodernism and Freudian theory. The Sex Pistols. Ingmar Bergman. In other words, all the stuff that you should be able to find at Barnes & Noble, but too often can’t. Hurricane Ivan hit the downtown hard in 2004 and Subterranean was in a prime spot to lose their inventory, but thankfully didn’t.
You can find a nice reading room with a couple of chairs and a whole bunch of old vinyl records while you thumb through alternative and often banned and certainly difficult to fine volumes of dangerous lore. Subterranean certainly stands in direct contrast to Hawsey’s and Pensacola as a whole. It’s a little progressive diamond in the rough and ready world of overbearing conservative thought, proving that even in the dark ages, there was flicker of the renaissance to come.
Subterranean Books: 850-934-3456
In addition to the abovementioned, the followed used bookstores in Pensacola should not be overlooked if you’re in the city. You never know what you may come across.
Book Garden: 850-475-0508. 1511 Creighton Rd.
Farley’s Old and Rare Books: 850-477-8282. 6200 Tippin Rd.
The Book Worm: 850-477-3369. 6116 Tippin Rd
