An Oxford bookshop balances work against play, asserting that it must have both to maintain its community.
“Just so you know, we don’t identify as a third space.”
For weeks, I had been thinking of Gulp Fiction as a ‘third space’ — a place where people can socialise outside of work or school, usually for low or no cost.
So when I heard, “Just so you know, we don’t identify as a third space,” I found myself torn between two responses: ‘Then what are you?’ or ‘Well, there goes the article’.
I say neither. Instead, I smile at the man working behind the bar and say: “That’s okay, we can still chat.” He’s obliging as he invites me to sit at a table in the corner of the small bookshop.
I’m sitting opposite Ollie Mason, owner of Gulp Fiction, a bookshop, coffee house, and bar in Oxford’s Covered Market.
Gulp Fiction opened in the spring of 2021 as part of Meanwhile in Oxfordshire, a programme that filled vacant shops after the Covid-19 pandemic.
The shop sells new and used books across a range of genres, and is delightfully cramped with mismatched tables for books and seating.
It is all lorded over by tall bookshelves lining the left wall, while the bar sits in the back right corner. The right wall is made up entirely of windows overlooking the Covered Market, and the shop is lit by Christmas lights, not-so-neatly strung across the ceiling.
The Gulp Fiction ethos: to make everybody feel valuable and able to talk to each other.
All of this blends into a warm, inviting environment for people to socialise and buy books, both central to the Gulp Fiction ethos: make everybody feel valuable and able to talk to each other, or, “To make everybody feel welcome and to provide hospitality that is reciprocated,” Ollie says.
He cited places like the now closed Albion Beatnik Bookshop in Oxford as an inspiration for Gulp Fiction. Albion Beatnik was once a major community hub but now refers to itself as “always neo-bankrupt” — a fate that Ollie predicts will befall all third spaces, one he quickly realised Gulp Fiction could only escape by focusing on its operations as a business rather than as a third space.
“It’s the difference between a safe space and space that employs staff,” Ollie explains when asked how he reckons Gulp Fiction’s ethos against being a business, “But if I want Ben over there to go home and eat,” Ollie says, gesturing to the employee working behind the bar, “If you sit down, you have to buy a coffee.”
Ollie admits that he’d love to do it all for free, but to make good on its mission, Gulp Fiction has to face up to its own commercial realities of employment and profit.
“You can’t have a third space in a … post-welfare state, really.”
Ollie Mason
Towards the end of our conversation, Ollie asserts, “You can’t have a third space in a … post-welfare state, really.” Without government subsidies, Gulp Fiction must rely solely on its own profit to function — first as a store, second as a community space.
Twenty years ago, it may have been possible for the bookshop to function as one, but during a cost-of-living crisis, it becomes difficult to do so when the lights have to stay on.
Ollie, however, is quick to prove that you can do your damndest. “I guess since I sat down, I’ll buy a latte,” I say, getting up to leave.
Ollie laughs and gives me a discount. “This is what it’s all about,” he insists when I try to pay full price — a business ethos that offers the kindness of a discounted coffee and prompts you to reciprocate by coming back for more.
Featured image by Maddie Agne.