Best of 2000: Best Bookstore

Wahrenbrock's Book House
726 Broadway, Downtown
(619) 232-0132

The musty smell, the economical buzz of the fluorescent lights, the industrial brown carpeting, the cozy-bordering-on-cramped spaces, struggling to remain free of books. Books in stacks, books in boxes, books on shelves of every kind: wood, glass, cabinets, stained, painted, blond, tall, short, fat, thin, elegant, homemade -- a maze of shelves, ushering you into new regions, new departments, new discoveries. The Broadway storefront is narrow, but it rises three stories, the stairs lined with Harvard Classics, the complete works of Voltaire, and other such sets. It's a place to get lost in for a few hours, to browse, to discover, and to do your part to keep this creaking, tottering civilization going.