I always wanted to open a used book shop. That’s sort of my fantasy when-I-retire job.

Aunt B. also dreams of funky retail, but her angle is slightly different than mine. She wants to open an occult shop, because she feels the need in Nashville is great, and the options are sorely lacking.

As previously noted, there are any number of problems with the woo-woo shops in Nashville. One, they’re all hung up on making sure that you know that they’re all feel-good, safe places to hang out and buy crystals and talk about aliens. Two, they’re not occult shops so much as New Age shops. They smell like hippie incense. The kids working behind the counter are all so young, why bother to ask them for help with anything? I don’t trust that the herbs are what they say they are.

I’ll never forget one afternoon a year and a half ago we were browsing in BookMan/BookWoman and some hippie-incense guy came running in, breathless. He begged the bookstore clerk for directions to the nearest place to get a reading. There was apparently some aura-cleansing emergency that simply could not wait. But then he stood around the shop essentially begging for approval from the store clerk and the other shoppers–as though we were supposed to praise him for how COOL he was to actually be into readings and aura-cleansing. It was bizarre.

Anyway, I hope that her creepy evil occult shop will be available to provide readings for dudes like this so they don’t have to slum it at Magic Journeys.