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If it's books you're after, look no further, thanks to the dashing efforts of Bridge Books founder Griffin Shea. Many years in the making, this map of Joburg's booksellers is a project close to our hearts, and one we as Johannesburg In Your Pocket were fortunate to play a role in bringing to fruition, alongside our fellow "accidental cartographer" Bradley Kirshenbaum of Love Jozi.
This collaboration has deep roots. Since we started 11 years ago, Johannesburg In Your Pocket has worked with Love Jozi on mapping the city together. In that time we've also collaborated to produce a book of essays on Joburg titled I Love You I Hate You. Essential reading! In 2017 we worked on a project called #JoziWalks with the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA), bringing together champions across the city who curated funded walks of their neighbourhoods. Shea was one of the people chosen by the project with a walk of Joburg's Underground Booksellers, which has become a regular tour.
Talking about the map released this month (Sep 2024), Shea recounts for the Sunday Times it began like this: "Nearly a decade ago, I decided to take a walk around the Johannesburg CBD, mostly on a whim, looking for bookstores. I was reliably informed there weren't any. No one in my suburban bubble knew of any. Admittedly, drawing conclusions about the City Centre from informal focus groups pulled largely from the Parkhurst brunch crowd might invite sampling errors, but those perceptions were reinforced by a map."
Not so quick to believe the City Centre was devoid of bookshops, Shea checked Google Maps. "The screen filled with neatly labelled streets and landmarks, but there was not a single pin in the City Centre," he says. Instead, he was directed to well-known book outlets inside shopping malls.
"Blank maps say a lot," writes Shea. "They suggest there's nothing to see, so don't even bother visiting. They imply that, even if something is there, it's not worth recording. Because no one has bothered to take notes or share what they found, some people fill the emptiness with their own stories."
Aware his search might be for nought but determined to try anyway, Shea headed out from Park Station to fill in the blanks. Before setting foot outside the building he encountered a bookseller in the corridor. "The Bon Voyage Superette offered travellers a hot meal from its takeaway counter and a second-hand book for the road," Shea recalls. The plaza outside was another purchase point, selling popular fiction and children's books, while still more books were traded on the steps leading down to De Villiers Street. On and on it went. "That morning I found a dozen booksellers, and they recommended so many more it was impossible for me to keep track of them," says Shea.
He hastily sketched these in an A5 notebook, later using it to pinpoint booksellers on a custom Google Map of Joburg's literary district. "Seeing the little pins clustered so tightly in the downtown zone made the reality of the city feel different," Shea explains. "It was no longer an empty space, but rather a vibrant one filled with books. That new way of looking at the city became a new way of thinking about it."
The idea that Joburg had a so-called literary district crowded with booksellers inspired Shea to join the chorus, opening Bridge Books in 2016 – a darling of African independent literature. We should also mention his work with the Johannesburg Literary District (also known as LitDistrict), founded as a community organisation connecting readers, booksellers, and tourists. The underground booksellers walking tours and ongoing initiatives to crowd-source children's books for street libraries in Soweto and Alexandra are under this umbrella, as are campaigns for the reopening of the Johannesburg City Library following its prolonged closure since May 2021.
In this, Shea has friends in the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation (JHF) led by the inimitable Flo Bird, who staged protests in Beyers Naudé Square outside of the library. These de facto guardians of the city's library have been successful, with a partial reopening earmarked for 2025.
As fans of Shea's work around Joburg's book culture and his commitment to increasing access to literature, we were only too pleased to be part of the process of updating Bridge Books' map of the LitDistrict, with Kirshenbaum handling design. It was no easy task to visually chart 71 booksellers in the City Centre. "The downtown area is huge and has a vast array of booksellers, and that made getting the map onto paper especially challenging," Shea explains. The map had to be large enough to accommodate a physical address and a short description for each trader so you know what you'll find there, be it Amharic bibles, school textbooks, or Zulu poetry.
One of the best things about this map is that it places informal traders and tried-and-true institutions on an equal playing field. As book lovers know, there's no telling where you'll find surprising and oftentimes long-sought-after titles. We're wired to scan the shelves or sidewalk displays for the special copy that's been eluding us, and few things beat the feeling of eventually tracking it down. That's not to diminish the joy of discovering a gem you didn't even know you needed in an unlikely place. The bookseller's map is a choose-your-own-adventure through the city, with places you know and love and many more you'll be delighted to discover.
"Some of the pins point to tiny pavement stands such as one in De Villiers Street owned by Ms Davids, who sells cosmetics, costume jewellery, and motivational books meant to improve the mind and body," Shea writes. Another leads to Limbada & Co, the city's oldest bookstore, trading since 1920 in Nathanson's Building on Diagonal Street. Owned by third-generation bookseller Imtiaz Limbaba, this is your go-to for books on indigenous languages and knowledge.
"The biggest bookshop by far is Collector's Treasury which claims to have two million books. Walking around the store that certainly feels true, given its full eight floors of reading," says Shea. The books are heaped along walls and staircases, and arranged atop any surface that will hold them. Despite this dizzying array, the owners have an uncanny ability to locate exactly what it is you're looking for – if they have it in stock. "For an even more jam-packed bookstore, Dominion Stationery has so many books that there's no room for people. The owner welcomes you at the doorway, takes your request, and sends someone deep into the stacks to find what you are looking for," Shea continues.
Named as one of journalist Elizabeth Stamp's 150 Bookstores You Need to Visit Before You Die, James Findlay Collectible Books & Antique Maps in the basement of the historic Rand Club is, according to Shea, "the fairy-tale version of what a bookstore should be." Bridge Books also cracked a spot on Stamp's list and is on the map, too – previously with their Commissioner Street space and now with their new home in the landmark Barbican building. (Further afield, Bridge Books has a charming retail outlet in Linden.)
"Now we have corner windows onto the streets that run to the parks we're trying to care for. It gives us space for reading programmes and book launches, as well as places where children can study after school," says Shea. "Bridge is not the biggest, the oldest, or the most beautiful store. Half the time, I can't believe it's managed to stay open. But it is a curious spot – a good place to fill in some of the blanks in Johannesburg's story."
Just a few years after Joburg was founded in 1886, a business directory from 1890 listed 11 booksellers in the city; among these was the Central News Agency which later became CNA, trading then from a makeshift structure on the corner of Commissioner and Rissik Streets. It's clear that books have always been a part of the city's story, and the thriving, wonderfully diverse concentration of books (and their sellers) in Joburg's literary district does well to affirm they're here to stay.
This story quotes Griffin Shea from an article in the Sunday Times, originally published in August 2024.
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