The Quarantine Pivot
“The Savage Detectives are life investigators, inspectors of the experience...”
Photo by Scott McDaniel/thewilddetectives.com
It was a little over a week ago when a story posted by Adweek caught my eye.
The article was about a Dallas-based bookstore called The Wild Detectives.
The owners found themselves with the need to come up with clever ways to energize their business amidst this nation’s stay-at-home order. Their solution? To pivot and become a travel agency.
Of course, no one is traveling much these days. They came up with an innovative solution to keep selling books online. Customers can log in to gobookatrip.com and choose their destination which brings them to a list of novels that take place there.
“Traveling the world is easier than you think…”
Their quarantine pivot led to a 200% increase for revenue in April.
I hope many other small businesses that are in peril can find creative ways to weather this pandemic.
The concept jumped out at me. I’ve long been in the habit of buying a book that takes place in a location I’m about to travel too. Something I admittedly learned from an Anthony Bourdain interview I read a few years back.
“Read up; but not the guidebooks,” He said in a 2013 Q and A with Sherman’s Travel. “Read novels by people who spent a long period of time at the street level there: Ex-intelligence officers, NGO workers. It doesn’t matter how old the book is, it’ll give you a sense of how a place smells, feels, the little intricacies, annoyances, and delights of a place.”
It’s a travel tip I have found rewarding and I’m sure Javier and Paco felt the same way when they designed their new website.
Despite being to Dallas a few times, it was the first I’ve heard about this place after reading about in the article. The Wild Detectives. What a great name. That alone piqued my curiosity.
Paco Vique & Javier García del Moral. Austin, circa 2009
Turns out that the store’s name is a loose translation from the classic Latin-American tome The Savage Detectives by Chilean author Roberto Bolano (a fantastic read by the way). Owners Javier Garcia del Moral and Paco Viques say that their business not only takes their name from the title but from the “overall ethos” of the book.
“The Savage Detectives are life investigators, inspectors of the experience,” reads a line from the novel.
The bookstore was first opened in 2014 in opened in the Dallas’ Bishop Arts District, a part of the larger Oak Cliff neighborhood by two civil engineers who expatriated from their native Spain.
Javier and Paco write in a post on their bookstore’s website that they wanted a space that would combine two of their passions…books and booze, but their motivations are much deeper.
They wanted to create a space that harkened back to another time, when cafes in cities like Paris, Barcelona, and Mexico City were places where writers, arts, and other intellectuals gathered to share drinks and engage in conversation.
“Our plan is clear: feed them culture, get them talking,” Reads a description on their website. “It’s all about conversations. Conversation and human interaction, those are the raw materials stories are made.”
The concept is not an original one, nor does it need to be. Javier and Paco have sought out to harken back to a concept that has existed for over 200 years in places across the globe — the literary salon.
The concept of salons first popped up in 16th century Italy and France a place or gathering where the intelligentsia of that time could meet and exchange ideas on art, philosophy, etc.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the concept was used by the creative class of France and other countries as a place where writers, musicians, and other artists could debate the trends of cultural and social issues.
The concept of a salon is something poised to make a resurgence in this post-modern era and that need will only be bolstered when this pandemic comes to an end.
I’ve spent most of my life looking for a community such as the one The Wild Detectives is trying to emulate. It’s inspiring to see people like Javier and Paco pursue their project of passion in a growing city like Dallas.
Photo by Scott McDaniel/thewilddetectives.com
By design, The Wild Detectives is more than just a bookstore. It’s a bar. It’s a cafe. It’s a third space for people in their community to gather. To enjoy every day of life and before the pandemic, a haven for human interaction in a world of constant distraction. Granted, big-box bookstores have a place to grab a coffee, but they don’t encourage you to spend an afternoon idly sipping your favorite beverage and striking up conversations with strangers.
They have built upon that business model and made it something more. Something that is truly something special in my opinion…A place that does more than just sell books. It’s a space that seeks to organically create a sense of community, foster thought, and appreciate the simple pleasures that have become lost in our always-online world.
As a result, they’ve created a place where writers from Dallas’ burgeoning literary scene gather and exchange ideas. It’s a place where people gather to not only buy a new read but enjoy live music, plays, and poetry readings. If you find yourself asking if a retail space can be more than a place to buy goods… the answer is yes. It can also be a place to find experience.
It’s a shame that the Coronavirus has changed life, for the time being, making it impossible to gather at a place like The Wild Detectives…it’s something needed more than ever.
One day, we’ll get back to normal life, and when we do, I hope to find myself sitting at The Wild Detectives sipping on a drink and engaging in good conversation with a stranger.