El on Adventure: Visiting The Ripped Bodice

I am traveling over the next two weeks on a very nerdy (and very book-filled) adventure, so I figured I’ll drop in from time-to-time with some fun pictures and stories!

Today I landed in Los Angeles in the late afternoon, hopped in my rental car, and dashed up to The Ripped Bodice. From their website:

The Ripped Bodice is the only exclusively romance bookstore in the United States. The mission behind the store is simple: women should profit from their creative output. We feature as diverse a selection of romance as we can get our hands on, as well as jewelry, stationery and beauty products.

This is the only brick-and-mortar romance-specific bookstore in the US, run by two awesome sisters who have created a lovely store filled with a wide selection of books. And since this was my only chance to visit, I raced (well, crawled) through traffic to make it shortly before they closed.

So here are some pics from the store:

Look at that awesome queer romance section!

I spy a RITA award-winner….!

El meets Bea and Leah… and Fabio!

My purchases. I wanted to get more, but I’m only on day one of the trip!