Take-me-to-your-leader lit
Jennifer Bates' bookstore welcomes apocalypse aficionados with all kinds of
page-turners on the paranormal.
Posted on Wed, Sep. 29, 2004 PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
I M A G E S
MICHAEL BRYANT / Inquirer
Jennifer Bates runs Germ, a new bookstore in Fishtown that sells only
titles dealing with UFOs, conspiracy, ESP and the like. She has never been
abducted by aliens, she says, but she loves the psychology of fringe sciences.
MICHAEL BRYANT / Inquirer
Jennifer Bates’ bookstore welcomes apocalypse aficionados with all kinds of
page-turners on the paranormal.
Take-me-to-your-leader lit
Jennifer Bates' bookstore welcomes apocalypse aficionados with all kinds of
page-turners on the paranormal.
By Jeff Gammage
Inquirer Staff Writer
A germ is a seed, a bud, an egg, the spark of a new idea that can lead to
invention or truth.
A germ is a pathogen, a parasite, a virus, a microscopic destroyer of life and
health.
In 12 Monkeys, a germ is the villain, killing billions of people. In
The War of the Worlds, a germ is the hero, slaying the Martian invaders.
A germ can change the way you feel. And look. And react.
It can even change the way you think.
•
Let's get this out of the way:
Jennifer Bates has never been abducted by a UFO.
She's never been swept into the sky on a beam of white light, been stretched out
on an examining table and probed with cold metal instruments.
But she knows people who have. Or at least, who believe they have.
And she's had her own weird experiences, one in particular. About 10 years ago
she had a vision: She would open a bookstore, called Germ, and in it she would
sell only books that she would want to read.
Now that vision has come true.
What that means for you, the book-buying public, is that if you're looking for a
New York Times best-seller or the latest Oprah pick, stay out of her store.
Bates' new and used books all fit under the umbrella of what might be called
Apocalypse Culture: UFOs, Bigfoot, Kennedy assassination, ghosts, time travel,
conspiracy, ESP, the unexplained, unknown and just plain peculiar.
At Germ, located in the city's Fishtown neighborhood, the shelves bear no
listings for Romance, Mystery, Sports or Parenting. Instead it's Mind Control,
Secret History, Drugsploitation, Nature Gone Bad, War and Why We Need It, and
Our Mysterious Brain.
It's not that Bates believes in all this stuff, or even most of it. But, she
says, there are events that can't be explained. Like the Rendlesham Forest
incident in England, where U.S. Air Force officers went into the woods thinking
a plane had crashed, only to come upon a strange, glowing craft.
"There is compelling evidence," Bates says. She adds with a smile: "There always
is."
In a case like that, she says, it could be an alien spaceship. Or it could be a
secret government aircraft, out for a spin. Close encounter or German
engineering? It's hard to know.
Either way, she's fascinated by the psychology of the fringe sciences, by the
meanings people assign to experiences and the connections they make between
them. So while Germ is a place to find vintage Flying Saucer magazines,
she also wants it to be a place where people can talk and question without fear
of ridicule.
"This is a bookstore," she says. "But it's really more of an information
ministry."
•
Black hair. Black pants. Black boots. Black shirt. Black wristwatch.
That's Bates. Her green-brown eyes are piercing, her personality the same.
She paints beautiful, disquieting artworks that combine elements of Judaism,
American industry and atomic energy. Several hang in the gallery section of
Germ. She's fascinated by the Rosenberg executions, physics, higher math, and
the occultist practices of the Nazis. She loves The Day the Earth Stood Still.
And Charlton Heston, for his performance in Planet of the Apes and his
work leading the National Rifle Association. She owns several guns.
She gives herself one day a week off, on Thursdays. Three days she works for a
local nonprofit, and Friday through Sunday she runs Germ. Bates guards the store
entrance with a black-clad mannequin named Gunther, whom she describes as a
Soldier From the Future but who bears an unsettling resemblance to a German
storm trooper.
Bates, who gives her age as "between 30 and death," was born in California, her
adolescence spent in the punk-rock culture of Miami. Her mother was an English
teacher, very artistic, her father a Marine Corps intelligence officer who was
always reading about UFOs. That's what got her interested.
Not that her path from there to here was direct.
She ran off to New York before high school graduation. Got dragged back to
Miami. Went to the Rhode Island School of Design. Quit. Listened to the Velvet
Underground. Ran out of albums. Went to art school.
In the 1980s she moved to New York, to become a speed freak. She failed. Managed
several movie theaters. Decided to move to Hollywood to die. She lived. Moved
back to Miami, got a job at a planetarium. Left for New York. Hated New York.
Returned to Miami.
In the 1990s she followed a friend to Philadelphia. She stayed.
Bates knows that these days, a successful independent bookstore can seem as rare
as, well, a Yeti sighting. Independents died by the score during the 1990s,
devoured by big chains and Internet sales, and as a group they struggle now,
their 16 percent market share half the onetime peak.
Why do some survive while others fail? The answer is as mysterious as a crop
circle. Some have fanatically loyal customers. Others just happen to be located
in areas that don't interest the chains. Many reinvented themselves as niche
stores, specializing in single subjects. Like Germ.
•
When Bates was 9, she saw a string of lights in the sky that could have been a
UFO. It also could have been a fuel discharge from an aircraft.
She's never had a supernatural encounter. She has experienced several strange
"timing incidents," those fluky 10-seconds-later-and-life-would-be-different
coincidences. When she was living in Hollywood, she decided to give away
everything she owned - clothes, furniture, paintings, books. Everything. She
walked out of her apartment, newly broke and homeless, strode down Sunset
Boulevard - and smack into an old friend from Miami. He told her that, one, she
was crazy, and two, she could stay at his place for a while.
That's sort of how it goes for her, oddity followed by aberration - so far, all
on this planet.
"I wish I could say I was picked up by a UFO," Bates says. "A lot of people say
I was dropped by one."
Contact staff writer Jeff Gammage at 215-854-2810 or
jgammage@phillynews.com.
GERM books can be
contacted at
215-423-5002 or go to
http://www.germbooks.com/.