El Paso agents - activate!

It was during a visit with some friends from El Paso that we heard the news: People's Emporium had shut down.

Apparently this happened a while ago, but it was news to me. I think it was also more of a shock to me than to Lopez! because it had been one of my El Paso touchstones, one of those things that was so "El Paso," but at the same time almost out of step with the city just out of its sheer weirdness.

Imagine being a young kid, living in a part of the city that makes trips to the Downtown area seem like a rare treat. For me, this is where the action was: the main library branch, which for me always had the same spiritual vibe as a Gothic church; my aunt's bookstore; the medical building where Mom worked; the bars my dad frequented and where my sister and I would pretend to play shuffleboard and pool. And of course, People's Emporium.

It wasn't until later that I was really aware of A-1 Costumes on the second floor, with its wonderfully creaky wooden stairway and musty, heigh-ceilinged area crammed with spirit gum, latex masks and cheap bald-caps. For me, it was all about the enormous first floor, an odd cramming together of a used bookstore, a novelty shop and an occult back-room.

My parents practically had to drag me out of there every single time.

It didn't hurt that the building itself was unique. Square in the heart of the Five Points neighborhood, People's Emporium occupied a large wedge of brick painted a red that bordered on lurid, at least in my imagination.

Maybe that's what I loved so much about the place; it was somewhere my imagination could run wild, snatching up sci-fi paperbacks with one hand and fingering smoothly polished gemstones with the other, magic crackling in the grip of both. If I could steal a peek at a half-dressed woman preserved forever at the bottom of a glass ashtray, my trip could be considered a complete success.

When I heard that the Emporium had closed down, I have to admit my heart broke a little. It was one of those things a person just assumed, naively, would always be there. I still made periodic trips as an adult, either to prowl the aisles of the bookstore or to pick up some face-paint for that year's Halloween costume. It never occured to me that my last trip there would also be my final trip ever to what I considered a local landmark.

I can't help feeling as if we - me and El Paso - have lost something. Maybe not something particularly important, but certainly something special.

So here's a special request to my pals in El Paso: Does anyone have any information about the closing? Did it make the paper? Is there any chance anybody out there has a photo of the building? And while you're at it, do you have any memories you'd like to share?

For myself, I know I'll be taking a lot of pictures around town the next time I'm in El Paso - just in case.