For the past 15 years, Bill Wenzlau has traveled the world from a little bookstore on the corner of Anacapa and Ortega streets in Santa Barbara.
On Saturday, he found more travel guides, to Berlin, London and Paris. They were printed in 1918.
“You come in here with no expectations and find some very special things,” Wenzlau said. “You discover things you never knew you wanted.”
Wenzlau, a winemaker, is speaking of Lost Horizon Bookstore, a staple of downtown for the past 35 years.
On Saturday, the narrow, hole-in-the-wall bookstore that has been a destination spot for people searching for rare books, photos, art and prints will be no more in its current form.
Lost Horizon is moving to 539 San Ysidro Road in Montecito’s Upper Village.
For the owners, husband-and-wife team of Jerry Jacobs and Angela Perko, it wasn’t their choice. The building sold and the rents are rising so they decided to search for a new place.
“I had always expected to stay here until the very end,”said Jacobs, 68. “I never anticipated that someone would take this building, which is full of character, and knock down the walls to create one giant place.”
Jacobs has spent a lifetime collecting things, whether it was coins or newspapers to deliver on his paper route when he was 10.
The departure of Lost Horizon means that only Eric Kelley’s The Book Den on Anapamu Street remains.
“I’ll be the last bookstore standing downtown,” Kelley said.
Kelley was shopping for deals Saturday at Lost Horizon. There’s a 50-percent-off sale that will remain until the store closes this weekend.
“Jerry really set a standard for the collectible book that is kind of hard to find,” Kelley said of his competitor. “He didn’t devote a lot of time and space to a lot of common things.”
Jacobs purchased many of his books, first-edition literature and history mostly, over the years through estate sales.
When he and Perko travel, they look for rare books that might be of interest to Santa Barbara residents. That’s how they survived for 35 years, although it hasn’t always been easy.
The rise of the internet and Amazon killed bookstores big and small across the nation. Now, many collectors of rare books can find them on the internet, eliminating the need to search the small bookstores for treasures.
People could also buy the books for less than half of what they paid at brick and mortar shops.
“The internet definitely made an impact,” Perko said.
The biggest challenge in Santa Barbara, she said, are the rising rents. When they first opened shop 35 years ago, they paid $650 a month in rent. She declined to say how much rent she pays now:
“It’s gone up a lot,” she noted. “This is not a super-high-profit business.”
But the duo never did it for money. They love books, and they made many relationships along the way.
“We’ve met and become friends and got to socialize people we never would have come in contact with otherwise,” Jacobs said.
Perko recalls how she was working late one night and a man stacked a dozen books on a chair at the front of the store and a woman told her to mail them to Simon.
She asked “Simon who?” The woman responded. Paul Simon.
The woman was the late movie actress and director Penny Marshall, and the man was comedian and actor Steve Martin.
“We never had a TV, and I am not up to date on modern culture,” Perko laughed.
The books at Lost Horizon are in good condition, which is the key to Jacobs’ pursuits. The books also have to be rare, where demand outweighs supply. You won’t find “Fifty Shades of Grey,” or anything that’s on the New York Times Bestseller list.
“The difference between a first edition “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac with no dust on its binder, and one that is marked would take the price down from $3,000 to $1,000.
Leaving the building is bittersweet for the owners. Although they will continue in a smaller spot in Montecito, they have many memories at the current site.
They raised two daughters, Sara and Tessa, at the store. They never went to preschool, and when they were infants they slept in cribs at the front of the store. The youngest, Tessa, now 28, is getting a doctorate in literature and folklore, and you can’t really blame her, Jacobs said, considering her upbringing.
Derroch Greer, a documentary filmmaker, has been going shopping at Lost Horizon for 25 years. He said he once found a first edition Ben Hecht memoir and gave it to a friend who “was so excited he couldn’t stand it.”
Greer always finds something special inside the store, and will be disappointed to see it move.
“We’re losing a sense of history,” Greer said. “This bookstore seems like the heart of Santa Barbara.”
The Lost Horizon story isn’t over, though, just turning the page to a new chapter. And like a great novel, there’s a lot of suspense about what’s next.
In its new space in Montecito, Lost Horizon will share a space with an art gallery. Jacobs and Perko hope to open in February after taking some time away to prepare the space and enjoy the holidays..
“It’s sad to leave after 35 years,” Perko said.
For Jacobs, who is a competitive pickle ball and softball player, the move is a just a chance to create the next compelling chapter in the story of the Lost Horizon.
“Why give up what I love,” Jacobs said. “It’s taking me 40 years to know what I know. My business is part of my pleasure.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
