Thompson's bookstore

this kinda may be a review.

the first time I heard of this place (I'm sure I saw it a couple of times before and thought of it exactly what it looks like from the outside: a fancy place. and given that I don't tend to usually like fancy places, I dismissed it in my mind) was when a server at a downtown (Fort Worth) restaurant chatted with me and sis asking us where we were headed after devouring those delicious fried duck legs, and recommended us to try this 'really cool place' for drinks: Thompson's, a few blocks down. and he told us to go to the basement bar that had a stairwell leading down to it from the street level. we were anyway headed in the same direction to another new and recently cool discovery of ours (not me and sis), a door away from this place. there was a burly guard/bouncer/usher standing right out the front entrance of Thompson's and we asked about going into the basement bar. I thought he asked for my passport, which annoyed me a lil because only a foreigner (hah!) carries a passport for a drinking id, and I told him that I had my state id and showed him this. he was friendly, even looked at it and then repeated again his demand: "password". I went "uh what?" only to hear the word again. password. sis and I looked at each other, and then got the story out of the guy; apparently you could enter the basement bar only with a password. whoa. the password could be found on facebook or from someone who knew it etc. etc.

we didn't want to go to the regular upstairs bar/lounge, because I still thought it looked too fancy for my taste, so we just went where we had planned before: La Perla Negra (another cool place, worthy maybe of another review another day). but of course, I felt denied. and yes I had to look it up later to figure out the password mystery of this place. the place is actually called Thompson's bookstore because at some point in history the space was used as a bookstore. incidentally, the basement was used as a chemist's or a pharmacy of some kind. and the password is to keep it feeling like a mysterious and secret speakeasy. although on weekends you don't need the password and can get down into the basement from the upper level lounge through a secret door. I'll get to that.

so I'd been wanting to explore this place since I read about it and since I was denied entry.

we happened finally this last weekend to try it. it has a dress-code, so don't go in your flipflops and cutouts please. maybe it was that, or maybe it was my first impression of its fanciness from its name on that building so simply and yet pompously written, that as soon as we were inside I whispered that it looked pretentious. there were about three seating areas in the small lounge space, each with a sort of circle of an assortment of ancient sofas and armchairs and footstools with a solid wooden coffee table at its center. in short it was like a large living room segmented into three seating areas for a large gathering of people. the decor is really old world, muted lights, oldish lamps, leather and ornate mismatched furniture, polished old wood, large bookshelves (full of hard-bounds) along most walls, with the bar running lengthwise through the whole room along one wall. so you often end up sharing a coffee table with other guests, couples or sets of friends. and the sofas are really comfortable. the first thing I did was to set out looking for the door that led down to the speakeasy. none to be found. hmm. we asked the lady usher at the door this time, and she said the bar down was full (to capacity) at this point in time.

five minutes of settling in, getting used to the darkness, finding an unoccupied large seat for the two of us, I started to change my mind. there seemed to be no bustle of servers rushing in and out. only two bartenders who left the bar now and then to ask about the other guests. there was a hardbound encyclopedia on the side table to my right, and also a lamp on it that would not light, and there were books - Shakespeare, Homer, lots of classics, also Sidney Sheldon and John Grisham, and just a lot of books. and no one cared that I hunched down by the bookshelf and leafed through, only to have postcards, photos, exam questions, notes, fall from the pages. even something about the caste system, where else but the Indian caste system and something about India and China trade, etc. etc. one book had a handwritten line on its first page, "If you give this book to someone else, let me know who its with." just lil tidbits of personal histories falling from those pages.

part of the ceiling is also done up in old books. full yellowed pages, torn from books, stuck haphazardly on top of each other like a random collage, some with pictures, that you can stare up into.

its a strange place that really felt like a house party.

they are known for their cocktails, named after songs or books. ours were "actually tasty" according to hubby, unlike drinks usually. I had a regular Negroni (two; after a couple of glasses of wine earlier that day) because I'd been hearing about Campari lately and wanted to try, and hubby tried Killing Pablo and one more (forgotten). but for me the best was feeling so much at ease in there lounging around. you can pull up a leather-topped stool and stretch your legs without asking/bothering anyone or calling attention to yourself. actually that was it. you just did not call attention to yourself in that place, everyone just let be each other. at the same time smiling or looking at each other as at intriguing strangers at a party.

oh yeah, and the secret door. a wall of bookshelf near the entrance swings into a door, down to the basement, just like that. and no one gasps and exclaims at it. its just so normal in there. the basement did not have the same Victorian armchairs and couches, its a lil more sparse but brighter down there. with sheer curtains separating lil circles of barstools from each other. no smell of the spirits/chemicals that I had been told about, but yes the same feeling of easy anonymous camaraderie as up above.