By SAMANTHA SWINDLER/The Oregonian/OregonLive
LINCOLN CITY — Along the narrow, twisting, seemingly endless corridors of books, one could easily get lost inside Robert’s Bookshop.
The used bookstore in Lincoln City is charmingly cluttered, with books stacked to the ceiling and, in some cases, piled on the floor for lack of shelf space.
For the store’s 30th anniversary in 2017, owner Bob Portwood measured the stacks. He counted 8,709 lineal feet of shelf space — that’s 1.65 miles of books.
“We’re very careful when we close up at night to search the store,” Portwood said. “We’ve found people either reading in a corner or asleep, and I don’t mind that, because I like it that people are that relaxed, they’re that comfortable.”
There’s no official inventory, but Portwood estimates his labyrinth-like store houses more than 200,000 volumes, with another 50,000 books in storage.
Every bit of wall space not taken up with bookshelves (including the ceiling) houses pop culture memorabilia that’s part museum, part personal collection. Shoppers can find a vintage Howdy Doody doll, Clark Gable’s driver’s license from 1938, a signed photograph of Vivien Leigh, and tons of original, mid-century pulp artwork used for book covers.
Some of the pieces are for sale, but some Portwood can’t part with.
“I enjoy stuff,” he said. “I buy things and stick them in the store because I like to look at them.”
Robert’s Bookshop also sells DVDs, CDs, records, trading cards and comics. The store only carries used volumes – everything from $1 paperbacks to pricey rare tomes.
Shoppers can find new books at Portwood’s second Lincoln City shop, Bob’s Beach Books.
Portwood has been an avid reader since he was a kid in the 1950s. His father, who worked for the Northern Pacific Terminal Co. in Portland, would walk the empty passenger trains at the end of his shift. He’d pick up the comics and paperbacks that travelers had left behind and bring them home for his kids to read.
Thus began Portwood’s early love of westerns.
Portwood served in the Army, then worked in construction until he fell off a roof.
“I thought, it’s time to do something else,” he said, “and having a bookstore, that should be much safer than climbing on roofs.”
He opened Robert’s Bookstore in 1987. Soon after, he bought the building next door to merge them into a single, massive shopping space.
“It doesn’t matter how much space you have,” Portwood said, “you always find more books you want to stock.”
The store has sections devoted to vintage children’s literature, military history, folklore, sci-fi, romance, westerns, art books, cookbooks, true crime, pulps and obscure how-to guides and manuals.
“I’ve got books in here that we’ve had for years because I like them, and I refuse to get rid of them, even if nobody wants them,” Portwood said. “ Sooner or later, somebody’s going to want that book.”
About 10 years ago, Portwood broke both his feet — a couple of weeks apart, in separate incidents — and his youngest daughter, Emily Portwood, came back to Lincoln City to help out at the store.
“I was just going to come back for a year,” she said, “and it kind of snowballed from there.”
Emily Portwood, who had worked in publishing, is now taking over management of the shop as her 78-year-old father slows down.
In 2018, she began the slow process of creating a digital inventory of the books. Much of the fiction section has since been cataloged, but the vast majority of the inventory can only be found the old-fashioned way – by wandering around.
“A lot of people walk in and say they’ve never been anywhere like this before,” Emily Portwood said. “It’s a place where you can walk around the corner and find something you’ve never seen before. But it’s also a place where you find familiar favorites and things you loved when you were a kid.”
- Robert’s Bookshop, 3412 S.E. Highway 101, Lincoln City, is open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday and Monday. Rare and delicate books are sold online at robertsbookshop.com or via biblio.com. Books are considered for purchase by in-store appointment only. Call 541-994-4453.
- Samantha Swindler covers features for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach her at sswindler@oregonian.com.
I love the article on Robert’s Bookshop – I look forward to more! It would be great to get an update on the HUB in Waldport. I recently read and enjoyed the article from a few years ago, when I was researching The Hub as a possible place to donate. They are so pressed for space, perhaps an article would draw someone who could help them fundraise for a new space.