SOMETHING SQECIAL ABOUT THIS BOOKSTORE

It could only feel more like the '60s if Jimi Hendrix stumbled back out of
his purple haze and wandered in to thumb through a copy of Herman Hesse's
Demian.

It's Sqecial Media, a neato store on South Limestone in the UK district. A
place that smells like reading, and at one time signified a whole lot more.
It was, as they used to say with eyebrows arched with graying horror, a
Head Shop. It stocked rolling papers and pipes and how-to-grow books -- in
theory, everything for marijuana use except for marijuana. Ahem. High Times
magazine. Ahem. The Anarchist's Cookbook, still on their best-seller list.
Ahem ahem ahem.

But these days, it feels about as edgy as Bob Dylan in a Barcalounger. Pull
up The Natural Cat or Everyday Tofu and sit yourself down in one of those
alluringly comfortable chairs in one of Sqecial's airy rooms. Walk wild.

Yes, even in a post-Amazon.com-world, Sqecial has a clientele that is all
its own. Even on a Sunday afternoon, with UK out on summer break, the store
has plenty of foot traffic, from families to retirees. You will rarely find
a best-seller at Sqecial, by design.

"Occasionally we may carry a book that winds up on The New York Times
best-seller list, but it's rare," owner Mary Morgan says. "But we have our
customers who come in for the Buddhist books. We have our customers who
come in for the Wiccan books."

Founded in 1972 by former teacher and insurance-company employee David
Adams and merged with a store called The Store in 1975, Sqecial Media's
name still trips many novices into trying to shoehorn that "u" where it
doesn't belong, creating the misspelled "Squecial." Suffice to say that
"Sqecial" originated with a misspelling and/or something relating to
minding p's or q's; the "Media" half of the name originates from the late
media theorist Marshall McLuhan's idea that anything could be considered media.

At Sqecial Media, you find a wide range of unusual books (Eastern
philosophy, feminist, alternative health, politics), unusual cigarettes
(clove, spearmint), unusual jewelry (jangly Cleopatra ankle bracelets for
less than $5), eclectic magazines (Throat Culture: Abrasive Music
Magazine), home decor, bumper stickers, pins, candles, and incense,
incense, incense. Sqecial stocks a selection of toys -- for people of small
stature as well as jaded adults suffering midafternoon productivity
problems (Raven the bobble-headed Goth girl!).

Rolling papers and the assorted marijuana accessory trade have always been
a source of debate, as such items can, of course, be used to produce legal
(if odious) tobacco cigarettes. But now that many convenience stores carry
such items, the head-shop stigma has largely faded into a sort of historic
camp appeal, like grandma's moonshine still.

Where is Adams himself these days? A store sign alleges, jokingly, that he
is in Bhutan, water skiing and working on his vegan cooking; in fact, he
still has a part in the business and lives nearby on Upper Street. He and
Morgan have a 15-year-old daughter, Morgan Adams, who is often in the
store; she and teen colleagues have started their own free newsletter,
Plastic Hat. The Morgan Adams name may also be familiar from another
source: It is the name of the used bookstore Adams also operates, in the
Meadowthorpe shopping center.

"The more books in circulation, the more it does out there for us," Morgan
says.

She doesn't see her stores folding any time soon. "I can't imagine doing
anything else," she says from her corner desk at Sqecial, overlooking
Limestone, a piece of the UK campus and the entirety of the McDonald's next
door. "People like looking at books. They like to look at them, page
through them, hold them."