Cameron's Books and Magazines

Cameron's Books and Magazines (or simply Cameron's) is Portland, Oregon's oldest bookstore.[1] Established in 1938, Cameron's boasts a periodical inventory estimated at nearly 100,000 volumes, the shop has become one of the largest vintage magazine dealers in the United States.[2][3]

Cameron's Books and Magazines
IndustrySpecialty retail
Founded1938 (1938)
FounderBob Cameron
Headquarters336 Southwest 3rd Avenue,
Portland, Oregon
,
United States
Area served
Portland metropolitan area
ProductsUsed books and magazines
OwnerBob Cameron (1938–1976), Fred Goetz (1976–1989), Jeff Frase (1989-2019), Crystal Zingsheim (2019-present)
Websitecameronsbooksandmagazines.wordpress.com

The store was slated to close in November 2019.[4] However, a successful crowdfunding campaign allowed a longtime employee to purchase the business and continue operations within the same space.[5]

History

Bob Cameron

The shop’s founding owner/operator and namesake Robert Edmond “Bob” Cameron, a graduate of Franklin High School, attended Albany College before finding work with the Multnomah County Library.[6] A devoted philatelist, he’d long hoped to become a stamp dealer, and, in 1930 at the age of 22, he launched the Cameron Stamp Company inside El Ray’s bookstore on downtown Portland’s SW Park Avenue between Yamhill and Taylor, where Director Park currently sits.[7] As clients and personal acquaintances began bringing Cameron other items to sell, Cameron recognized that used books represented his greatest source of revenue. Eight years later, the first iteration of his eponymous bookstore would open.[8]

Cameron’s would relocate seven times, occasionally changing names along the way.[7] By 1956, the shop had moved to 825 SW 3rd Avenue, and, in 1964, it finally found a permanent residence in 1964 on the corner of SW 3rd Avenue and Stark_Street, now known as SW Harvey Milk Street.[9] Their trademark (and long-broken) neon signage first appeared in 1984.[10] A large campaign poster for Wayne Morse, the controversial US Senator from Oregon, has been hanging above their counter since the Vietnam era.[11][12] Otherwise, as a 2009 Oregonian story about the “Portland institution” stressed, “not much has changed since. The aisles can be cramped, and the shelves are loaded. But that’s part of the charm.”[13]

Stamps remained a lifelong passion of Cameron’s founder. He ensured the bookstore always stocked them and continued to work in the field through his 1977 retirement.[6] Furthermore, he maintained regular shifts as clerk, manning the register for one hour each day until his death 11 years later.[13] In a 1972 Northwest Magazine piece, which suggested Cameron’s was Portland’s only store to freely offer customers paper shopping bags with handles, its proprietor was described as “the bookish-looking fellow who appears younger than his 64 years, the one with glasses, pipe, and the dried-pea green cardigan … his placid mien and barely audible speech in complete contrast to the hubub around him.”[7]

Fred Goetz

In 1976, at the age of 58, Frederick James Goetz assumed ownership of Cameron’s.[14] After an early stint as Baltimore Sun copy boy and occasional gofer for H. L. Mencken, Goetz served in the Merchant Marine during World War II.[15] After settling in Portland, he originated the popular weekly "Outdoor Scene" column for an early incarnation of the NW Labor Press in 1955, which soon spread his byline through about three dozen union-oriented publications across the country.[16] Taking into account his freelance artticles for such national glossies as Sports Afield and Field & Stream, an NWLP obituary estimated that Goetz reached around 12 million headers at his height as “the most widely-circulated outdoor writer in the United States.”[14]

Perhaps because of this experience, Goetz chose to expand the shop’s repertoire beyond books and stamps. Cameron’s had never sold periodicals until then, and a 1985 Oregonian article surmised “that introduction to journalism and magazines in particular” instilled the former columnist’s “lifelong love affair with periodicals.”[17] According to a Virginia Quarterly Review profile of the store’s third owner Jeff Frase, however, they were added simply to “diversify stock and add another revenue stream.” As Frase told the VQR, there “just seemed to be a market that no one else was dealing with locally at the time.”[2]

In any event, within his ‘secret library’ behind the Employees Only sign, Goetz compiled vast troves, including the first issues of more than 250 separate magazines.[17] As his collection mushroomed with volumes brought by walk-ins or plucked from estate sales, the owner constructed a labyrinthine vault inside the storage area where rickety stairs head up to a catwalk-bisected mezzanine whose walls have been stacked floor to ceiling with vintage media.[18]

A narrow passageway lined with lurid paperback novels leads to a small attic with, as the Oregonian wrote, “a carefully catalogued library” holding “70 years of The Saturday Evening Post ... Collier's, Look, Esquire, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Arizona Highways, Liberty, National Geographic – magazines covering everything from fashion and cooking to natural sciences and engineering.”[17] Marveling at their breadth of adult material, Willamette Week’s survey of their “impeccably curated magazine bank” noted “the Playboy archive bleeds into a jaw-dropping glimpse into the evolving American male hive mind as the 1950s' swinging photographer (Sunbather, Pose) turned '60s lothario (Escapade, Ace), '70s rocker (Adam, The Dude) and '80s perv weekender (Nugget).”[19]

Jeff Frase

In 1982, Goetz brought on a 30-year-old Jeffery Frase as part-time assistant charged with helming the intricate filing system.[13] While laid off from an apartment maintenance job, he’d been filling in for the vacationing proprietor of the Sellwood neighborhood bookshop King of Rome, who recommended him to Goetz, and, by the next year, Frase had been promoted to manager. With help from a familial loan, he took full ownership in 1989.[2] "I was trying out all kinds of little stores like this," Frase told the Oregonian. "It could've been a record store. It just so happened Cameron's was hiring."[18]

Situated on a block whose northern bookend, the Portland Outdoor Store, has been in business since 1919, Cameron’s managed to weather its share of dry spells, but changing economic climes had especially ravaged 21st century independent bookstores. By 2011, used magazines represented 40% of store sales. [20]“It’s a tough market,” Frase told the Oregonian. "The big chains came in, then the online sales, and now electronic readers. Those are three big hits.”[20] Still, they maintained a steady clientele of walk-ins and downtown office-workers, and, when work on downtown Portland’s Transit Mall redirected bus service down 3rd Avenue from 2007 through 2009, the new influx of bored commuters browsing through spinner racks helped see the shop through the Great Recession. [18]

In addition, longtime employee Crystal Zingsheim had long sought to cultivate a digital marketplace that would allow a national consumer base to virtually browse the shop’s singular cache of rarities.[21] Though at first hesitant about cultivating Cameron's internet presence, Frase eventually began opening the shop's inventory to e-commerce through such websites as AbeBooks and Biblio.com. “We broke down,” he admitted, but "listing our products online helped out sales.”[22] (Even past owner Fred Goetz had launched his own e-bookshop midst retirement as means of hawking book-fair finds before his 2002 death.)[15]

Their periodical archive had also begun attracting a new clientele of graphic designers, social researchers, machinists, and representatives of advertising agencies and academic institutions.[5] Similiarly, the vintage magazines were prized by film and television crews seeking authenticity for period pieces. "When productions around the country need otherwise unavailable periodicals as set props or reference material,” Zingsheim told Willamette Week, “the filmmakers send us an order specifying time period, historical context, and the mood of the scene they want to develop, and we pull the matching documents from our collection."[23]

Threatened Closure
The store's exterior, 2017

For more than sixty years, the retail space currently housing Cameron’s had been owned by the bookstore’s upstairs neighbors – the Golden Dragon Restaurant.[24] Beginning in 2008, famed PDX gay bar Silverado would lease the premises for another decade before 18+ adult lounge Golden Dragon Exotic Club opened inside the former Chinese buffet’s location.[25] In 2018, the strip club’s ownership group Jdsy 3rd Street LLC purchased the entire building for $3 million.[26] The outgoing landords contractually stipulated that all tenants would continue to pay the same rental costs for one year without increase, and, with that grace period set to expire, then-owner Jeff Frase received a surprise notice to vacate the premises by December 1st 2019.[1] “I kept expecting to hear from them about what was going to happen,” he told KOIN News, “and, instead of making me an offer to see whether I can stay, they just … refused to renew the lease.”[27]

Faced with a de facto eviction notice, the 67-year-old Frase had originally planned to retire and shutter the bookstore before one of his employees broached the crowdfunding strategy.[23] Crystal Zingsheim, who’d learned the rare book trade through a young apprenticeship with her father’s San Jose business, had worked with Frase for almost 20 years and hoped to take over the business following his retirement.[1] “I want to keep Cameron’s alive,” she said to the Oregonian about becoming the bookstore’s fourth owner. “It’s not about me or Jeff. We are simply caretakers of a legacy.”[21]

To that end, Zingsheim launched a Kickstarter page aimed at attracting enough capital to safeguard the shop’s inventory and fund its relocation. One month later, contributions from nearly 400 supporters had overshot the campaign’s stated $30,000 goal by more than $2K.[27] While searching out an appropriate new locale, Zingsheim also negotiated a temporary stay of eviction that allowed the business to stay open through a short-term lease.[28] Frase, who still maintains a presence at the shop as occasional clerk and used book scout, happily signed over Cameron’s to the new owner on the night before Christmas 2019.[5]

Zingsheim has spoken with Doug Whyte , executive director of the Hollywood Theater, about the possibility of moving bookstore operations toward the same not-profit status that allowed the beloved Movie Madness video rental store to survive changing economic conditions under the Hollywood’s aegis.[23] In addition, she has outlined plans for digitizing large swaths of Cameron’s archive, which contains periodicals dating back to the mid-1800s, and building an easily-accessible database for both written content and images. “More than 30% of our collection is the last remaining copy,” Zingsheim told the Oregonian, adding that “the information … encompasses the last couple hundred years of American history. It represents who and what makes up our country.”[5]

Cultural Influence
The store and Bishop's House, 2011

Portland City Commissioner and Independent Publishing Resource Center co-founder Chloe Eudaly, who first came to prominence as owner/operator of seminal mid-90s PDX zine emporium Reading Frenzy in 1994, has said an early stint working at Cameron’s offered her first “basic overview of the book business.”[29] Longtime downtown resident Thomas Lauderdale, founder of internationally-celebrated PDX lounge-pop troupe Pink Martini, listed Cameron’s as one of four candidates for his personal ‘Portland Hall of Fame.’[30] Pulitzer-winning historian Debby Applegate, raised in the nearby suburb of Clackamas, has credited childhood trips to the bookshop as helping cultivate her love of reading.[31]

Given its proximity to downtown Portland's hotel district, the shop regularly attracts visiting celebrities as well. While on tour with country legend Merle Haggard, iconic singer-songwriter Bob Dylan reportedly stepped inside Cameron’s to purchase a Time feature on Haggard after spotting the cover within their window display.[23] UK film star Richard Harris came into the store looking for a 1967 Life magazine and told former-owner Frase that he had been promised that issue’s cover until news broke about the surprise defection of Svetlana Alliluyeva, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s only daughter.[18] (Alliluyeva’s youngest daughter would herself open a curio boutique in NW Portland)[32]

Before embarking upon a 2009 global tour that took the avant-rock duo through Brisbane and Beijing, Kill Rock Stars act Panther shot a music video at Cameron’s as part of The Penny Jam series of tastemaker PDX bands playing unlikely venues.[33] In this clip, frontman Charlie Salas-Humara (Sun Angle founding member, Walter Salas-Humara nephew) and drummer Joe Kelly 31Knots are crammed into the north window display for a hurtling rendition of then-unreleased single “Control Your Ships”.[34]

In 2011, while attending the Wieden+Kennedy12 advertising school, future Nike designers Jin Ryu and Yi-fan Lu filmed a documentary exploring “the strong communities ... built up around the unique secondhand book market" that focused on the shop's “resurgence amongst the newest generation – a group known for their reliance on technology.”[35] Screened as part of the 38th Northwest Filmmakers' Festival, Willamette Week critic Matthew Singer deemed Cameron's Books “best and most straightforward” of the short program and wrote that the doc achieved “the tenor of a nature program capturing a creature in the wild just before its species goes extinct.”[36]

gollark: It should be possible to say "either both of these legal operations run, or none do".
gollark: But transactional legal systems would be better.
gollark: I think what we really need is ACID-compliant legal systems.
gollark: As such, nobody will ever do it.
gollark: That *would* be higher-efficiency given taxes.

See also

References
  1. Nadrich, Lindsay. "Portland's oldest bookstore Cameron's is set to close". KGW. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  2. Gilbreath, Aaron. "Cameron's Books and the Used Magazine Trade". VQR. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  3. Dresbeck, Rachel (Mar 1, 2011). Insiders' Guide® to Portland, Oregon (7th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. p. 113. ISBN 978-0762764754. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  4. Oregonian/OregonLive, Tom Hallman Jr | The (October 8, 2019). "Cameron's Books & Magazines, a Portland institution since 1938, is closing". oregonlive.
  5. Hallman Jr., Tom (7 January 2020). "Portland's Cameron's Books & Magazines is saved from closing, thanks to community help". Oregonian. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  6. "Robert E. Cameron". The Oregonian. 14 June 1986. Retrieved 15 May 2020.
  7. Gould, C.F. (September 17, 1972). "Cameron's: The Most in Used Books". Northwest Magazine. Retrieved 15 May 2020.
  8. "Cameron's Books and Magazines". Portland Monthly. Retrieved 15 May 2020.
  9. Mike, B. (2 November 1956). "Behind the Mike". The Oregonian.
  10. "Cameron's Books & Magazines". Portland Building Ads. 13 November 2008. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  11. Pintarich, Paul (21 December 1990). "If It Rains, Then Pore". The Oregonian. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  12. "Cameron's Bookstore, Portland, Oregon". Adalbert. 4 April 2013. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  13. Hallman Jr., Tom (25 January 2009). "A Winter Wander". The Oregonian. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  14. Klare, Gene. "Let me say this about that". NW Labor Press. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  15. "Frederick James Goetz". Bend Bulletin. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  16. "Fred Goetz, Outdoor Writer, Dies at 83". UE News. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  17. Bella, Rick (12 August 1985). "Hideaway's shelves door to the past". The Oregonian. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  18. Machado, Jessica (10 January 2008). "For books and mags, Cameron's is timeless". The Oregonian. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  19. Horton, Jay. "Inside the Last Adult Bookstores in Portland". Willamette Week. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  20. Hallman Jr., Tom (20 January 2011). "Southeast Portland: Looking Glass Bookstore victim of changing times". Oregonian. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  21. Hallman Jr., Tom (8 October 2019). "Cameron's Books & Magazines, a Portland institution since 1938, is closing". Oregonian. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  22. "Cameron's Books - an Icon in Downtown Portland". Park Bench. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  23. Horton, Jay. "Portland's Oldest Used Bookstore Is in Danger of Closing". Willamette Week. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  24. Foyston, John. "Revered Dragon of Feasts". Oregonian. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  25. Jankowski, Andrew D. (26 March 2018). "Gay strip club Silverado moving from downtown Portland". PSU Vanguard. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  26. Bell, Jon. "Closing the books". Portland Business Journal. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  27. Peterson, Danny. "Crowdfunding aims to save Portland's oldest bookstore". KOIN. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  28. Rosenberg, Joyce M. (9 February 2020). "Turning a page?". Oregonian. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  29. "Interview with Reading Frenzy Proprietress Chloe Eudaly". Ooligan Press. 6 March 2015. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  30. Brooks, Karen. "Get a Degree in Portland Old School". Portland Monthly. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  31. Santen Jr., J. David (23 April 2007). "Talk of the Book Town Pulitzer laureate wary of pitfalls of fame". Oregonian. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  32. Steinbuch, Yaron (17 March 2016). "Stalin's granddaughter is an all-American badass". NY Post. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  33. Caraeff, Ezra Ace. "The Music to the Masses". Portland Mercury. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  34. "Panther at Cameron's Books". The Penny Jam. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  35. Slade, Jacques. "Cameron's Books by Jin Ryu and Yi-fan Lu of Wieden+Kennedy 12". Hypebeast. Retrieved 16 May 2020.
  36. Singer, Matthew (9 November 2011). "Shorts II". Willamette Week. Retrieved 16 May 2020.

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