{"id":20184123,"date":"2025-09-17T07:52:33","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T14:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.metrosiliconvalley.com\/?p=20184123"},"modified":"2025-09-17T07:52:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T14:52:38","slug":"keplers-70th-anniversary-bookstore-menlo-park-paperback-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metrosiliconvalley.com\/keplers-70th-anniversary-bookstore-menlo-park-paperback-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Kepler\u2019s Celebrates 70 Revolutionary Years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How many bookstores around here can last 70 years? We\u2019re about to find out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday, Sept. 20, Kepler\u2019s in Menlo Park celebrates its 70th anniversary with a block party from 2 to 5pm. Since I wrote a column on this page for the 50th anniversary and then another for the 60th anniversary, there is no possible way for me to separate the journey of this column from the story of Kepler\u2019s, especially since it all started long before I was even born, that is, if one even believes in absolute beginnings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Kepler\u2019s 50th anniversary party, several dynamics all came together in glorious fashion. The event featured live music, raffles, games, prizes and book bags filled with the best books from the last five decades. For the raffle, I sat right next to Joan Baez. I didn\u2019t even realize it was her until she bagged one of the prizes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, Baez was, and still is, one of many heroic individuals whose stories are likewise inseparable from the journey of Kepler\u2019s bookstore. Others include the Grateful Dead, Neal Cassady, Ken Kesey, Stewart Brand and Steve Wozniak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So where did it all start? Well, Roy Kepler first opened the place in May of 1955. It seems odd now, but back in the \u201950s, most publishers, as well as the general public, didn\u2019t consider paperbacks to be \u201creal\u201d books. The entire concept of peddling texts in cheap paperbound volumes was a radical affront to the publishing trade. Roy Kepler, along with Fred and Pat Cody in Berkeley, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights in San Francisco, changed all of that. Bay Area bookstores became the leaders of the \u201cpaperback revolution,\u201d as it came to be called. It could only have happened in Northern California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A World War II conscientious objector, Kepler also helped spearhead the American peace movement for decades, spending his entire adult life opposing violence. In 1960, Roy and others were arrested at the Lawrence Livermore Radiation Laboratory for protesting against nuclear weapons. And that wasn\u2019t the only time the authorities carried him away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kepler\u2019s became a catch-all for every outcast imaginable. Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and Pigpen of the Grateful Dead supposedly first met each other while loitering around Kepler\u2019s and making a racket. When Ken Kesey needed someone to drive the Merry Prankster bus, he dispatched Neal Cassady straight from Kepler\u2019s to plot the cross-country spectacle. Hitchhikers often stopped by Kepler\u2019s on their way up and down the coast. It was a central focal point for bohemians who weren\u2019t welcome anywhere else. Baez and her pacifist guru Ira Sandperl became regulars, with Sandperl manning the register for decades. As the legend goes, Kepler\u2019s was the first place to stock both Playboy<\/em> and the Paris Review<\/em> right next to each other. Steve Wozniak and Whole Earth Catalog<\/em> founder Stewart Brand have both cited Kepler\u2019s as a place integral to their youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, controversy arrived in all shapes and forms. During the Vietnam era, when a second store existed in Los Altos, violent right-wingers who needed an enemy tossed a bomb through the window. In 1989, Iran\u2019s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on author Salman Rushdie, prompting bookstores everywhere to remove The Satanic Verses<\/em> from their shelves. Kepler\u2019s did no such thing. Instead, the store organized a public reading from the book by Ira Sandperl. Baez performed just for the occasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the 50th anniversary party in 2005, I picked up a 27-page orange-colored pamphlet, \u201cKepler\u2019s: 50 Years of Independent Bookselling,\u201d written by journalist Michael Doyle. One dollar of each purchase went to the Resource Center for Non-violence. At the time, Doyle was collecting memories and much of the pamphlet later wound up in his 2012 hardback volume, Radical Chapters: Pacifist Bookseller Roy Kepler and the Paperback Revolution<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time the Kepler\u2019s 60th anniversary party rolled around in 2015, Radical Chapters<\/em> was for sale and I bought a copy at the party. I still have the hardback and the original 27-page pamphlet. At that party, everyone was also given a name tag with space to write down how long they\u2019d been shopping at Kepler\u2019s. I put \u201cforever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This weekend, the 70th anniversary party will yet again cement Kepler\u2019s in the annals of history. Long live the revolution!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When Roy Kepler first opened his place in May 1955, most publishers, and the general public, didn\u2019t consider paperbacks to be \u201creal\u201d books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14789,"featured_media":20184126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[1877],"tags":[4039,4040,10772,17172],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n