NEW ORLEANS – From floor to ceiling, the books never seem to stop.

In fact, the books just got a good start.

WGNO’s Bill Wood is at Baldwin & Co , an independent bookstore in New Orleans.

It’s at 1030 Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans.

You’ll know the name of the place when you step inside and see the face.

The face of James Baldwin.

It’s been created by an artist who painted right onto books, right on the bookshelves.

That’s James Baldwin looking right at you.

The writer of novels, plays, poems.

And the inspiration for the name of the bookstore.

The man who’s inspired by James Baldwin is DJ Johnson.

DJ Johnson is himself an inspiration.

A New Orleans native who’d been working for the last twenty years in IT for the federal government.

DJ came home because his family’s here.

And then he made one of his dreams come true.

He opened his own bookstore.

In the middle of the pandemic, he opened his own bookstore.

It’s more than a bookstore.

It’s a place for you to fall in love, in love with learning.

And it’s a place to do just that over a cup of coffee.

And a place for that coffee to inspire a conversation.

As DJ Johnson says, “to help stimulate intellectual thought, coffee shops were invented as a place where some of the best philisophical minds exchange intellectual thoughts.”

It’s the kind of place where James Baldwin would fall in love.