A new chapter for Tampa Bay’s independent bookstores

Walking into Bookends: Literature & Libations in Ybor City feels like stepping into a friend’s cozy home. 

Colorful books are on display on gorgeous built-in shelves and atop vintage credenzas and tables. There are curious objects — like a vintage typewriter — and quirky furniture accessories that call back to a bygone era. The couches in one room are covered in plastic, the way grandma kept hers. There’s lively conversation, and people lingering and laughing. Soon, a kitchen and coffee bar will provide an additional enticement to stick around and hang out.

For three years, sisters and co-owners Teresa and Laurie Rodriguez operated Bookends as a mobile pop-up bookstore while rehabilitating a 100-year-old bungalow on the 2200 block of Second Avenue to be the permanent shop. Bookends finally opened in July, and it’s been busy ever since.

Bookends isn’t alone. In June,  tiny, family-owned, independent bookseller Itimpi Books opened a brick-and-mortar shop in Hyde Park after three years as a mobile bookstore. Moira and Isabella Sandoval, the mother-and-daughter team behind the bookstore, deliberately chose a single room in a historic bungalow over a conventional retail storefront. 

“Instead of thinking big, we were thinking small,” the Sandovals tell 83 Degrees in an email interview.

Bringing a little hyper-local back to Ybor

For Teresa and Laurie Rodriguez, Bookends had to be in Ybor City.

Their family’s ties to the historic neighborhood stretch back generations. Their great-grandfather worked nearby making cigar boxes and later operated a plumbing business on Seventh Avenue. They grew up listening to their grandparents’ stories of a neighborhood where nearly every daily necessity was within walking distance.

“Our grandparents had the best quality of life in Ybor City. It was all walkable, all nearby,” Teresa Rodriguez says. “Everyone you knew lived close. It was an incredible place. We want a little of that hyper-localness back.”

The sisters have watched Ybor reinvent itself repeatedly and see another transformation underway as more people move into and around the district. They want the next version to include more independent, locally-owned businesses,  more everyday services and shopping options for residents, better sidewalks and street crossings, and fewer gaps on city blocks from the surface parking lots that consume properties. 

When the sisters purchased the historic Ybor bungalow in 2022, they knew it would take substantial rehab and renovation work to get it ready for Bookends. They say Ron Vila, a historic preservation specialist with the City of Tampa, provided crucial help with navigating development approvals and the application process for city and county preservation grants, critical sources of funding that made the rehabilitation financially possible.

At Bookends, the books are just the starting point. The restored bungalow is itself a significant part of the Bookends experience. Patrons spread out on couches and browse books arranged on old furniture. They’re more guests exploring a home than customers walking aisles.

The shop routinely hosts author talks, poetry readings, book clubs, and other programming, including a tarot reader on Sundays. The kitchen will eventually add coffee and food, followed by beer and wine. They envision the space out back as a garden to host readings, parties, and other gatherings.

More than a bookstore

The Rodriguezes say some of their most popular events are author talks on books about Tampa Bay or Florida history. They draw intergenerational audiences that include longtime residents who remember pieces of the city’s past and young people curious to learn about the place they live.

Teresa Rodriguez jokes that the bookstore is a very expensive hobby.

“If it can pay for itself, we can keep enjoying it,” she says

Asked what they hope Bookends will look like three years from now, the Rodriguezes offer a simple, straightforward vision. They see a finished garden, evening gatherings, food and drink service, more books, authors, neighbors, and conversations.

Mostly, they say, they hope the people keep coming.

The strategy of going small

Itimpi’s one-room shop is part of a small retail ecosystem of its own. It shares the historic bungalow at 213 S. Howard Ave. with Noisy Crane Tea, a sit-down Chinese and Japanese tea house, and The Paper Seahorse, the longtime Tampa stationery shop and creative classroom.

Like Bookends, Itimpi spent three years operating as a mobile bookseller before opening a retail shop.

“The smaller footprint works for us,” the Sandovals say in an email. “Smaller payroll.”

Their biggest concern and largest expense is rent: They say their goal is to remain small and sustainable and become a household name in the community they serve.

Convenience can’t replace connection

There was a time when online retail looked poised to make brick-and-mortar shops irrelevant, and local bookstores were disappearing en masse. Today, they’re reappearing across the Tampa Bay region. 

Shops like Bookends, Itimpi, Black English Bookstore, and Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg provide that third place, that spot outside of home and work where people come together and connect.  

The Sandovals explicitly describe Itimpi as “a place to gather and talk about books.” Bookends fills the same role in Ybor, particularly for younger customers looking for a neighborhood place to sit and talk as much as they’re looking for a particular title.

Independent bookstores also offer something that can be harder to find when everything is available: a point of view. Some customers come looking for whatever title is trending. Others, the Rodriguezes say, want something different from whatever is constantly being put in front of them.

And often, what they’re really looking for is a personal recommendation.

That requires trust and finding a bookseller whose taste overlaps with your own. Then, when they press a book into your hands and say, ‘Try this,’ you’re confident it will be worth your time.

At Itimpi, limited shelf space requires more selective curation.  The store carries only Florida-related books, with a focus on authors and subjects that are popular with customers. Pirates, Prohibition, organized crime, haunted places, and Florida satire are a few examples.

The Sandovals see Tampa Bay’s growing bookstore scene as a network of complementary shops.  Different stores have carved out a niche around romance, Black authors, classics, Florida books, and other focus areas.

Bookends’ Laurie Rodriguez offers a similar take.  

“Other independent bookstores are an incredible ecosystem, not competition,” she says.

For more information, visit Bookends: Literature & Libations and Itimpi Books.