Changing Hands Bookstore - Mill Avenue, Tempe

The layout of the old Mill Avenue store was amazing... 3 different rooms and a mezzanine with lots of places to curl up and flip through photos of cats painting. I used to ride the bus from North Phoenix in highschool and check out the earings and lime-green Doc Martens in the store behind it, but Changing Hands was always the headliner. I was naive to believe all bookstores were this cool when they weren't in a mall, but my little book haven was hit with a rent increase which moved it to a strip mall several miles South of the university.

Tragedy? No. I'm slowly warming up to the new Changing Hands location, but it's taken approximately 8 years. What's missing? The little corners to curl up in, the railing to peer over and find my companion who likes to spend hours and could be anywhere, and the gobs and gobs of stationary, pins and gifts sprinkled throughout the store like a bizarre treasure hunt. Yes, it was THAT good. Barnes and Noble, Bookstar, etc, etc could never compare.