Citing the importance of location and a changing retail landscape, longtime local bar owner Pamela Sandoz—who currently operates The Bookstore bar on Airline Highway—has recently broken away from a 20-year-old personal tradition: She put up a sign.
Though it may seem inconsequential, Sandoz has never had a sign at either of the two bars she’s owned in Baton Rouge over the past two decades. Before opening The Bookstore last April, Sandoz had run Slinky’s on West Chimes Street since 1999, which she closed in February 2018 amid rising rental rates. The LSU-area bar was known for its lack of signage, a tradition Sandoz carried through much of The Bookstore’s first year of business.
But location matters, Sandoz says. Unlike Slinky’s—which was near Tiger Stadium, where hundreds of thousands of people typically congregate over the course of the LSU football season—The Bookstore’s location at the corner of Airline and Arnold Lane doesn’t get the same benefit of heavy, guaranteed foot traffic, meaning visible advertising is needed to draw customers.
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“I couldn’t stick to my legend as much because I need to attempt to lure more business, by virtue of my location,” Sandoz told Daily Report, noting some of her regulars are nostalgic for her bars’ histories as under-the-radar establishments.
That might’ve given Slinky’s a “cool factor” in the early 2000s, Sandoz says, but times have changed, particularly given the proliferation of free advertising brought forth by cellphones and apps like Instagram and YouTube.
“People are walking around with an unlimited amount of free ads, so you can’t really be an underground bar these days,” Sandoz says. “We’re so numb to marketing now that businesses have to bombard people with their image.”
The sign went up last week and is now emblazoned across the front of the Airline-facing building, with “The Bookstore” displayed in gold lettering outlined in red and “bar” in red lettering below.
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Despite the unforeseen addition, Sandoz says the neighborhood has given her a warm welcome over the past year, making her comfortable enough to “finally crack and join the 21st century.”
“I lost that notoriety of being the bar without the sign,” Sandoz says, “but I think this proves you can teach an old dog new tricks.”
This story originally appeared in the Feb. 26 edition of Daily Report. Read the story here.