ABOVE: Skull-Face Books & Vinyl in Honolulu's Chinatown is a paean to the analog age. A passion project of Josh Spencer, who founded The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles, Skull-Face caters to those with an appetite for the weird, dark and archaic.
Black like squid ink, black like deep space. Music ricochets off the walls and out into the streets of Chinatown—metal or thrash maybe, sometimes reggae, funk or hip-hop. Since opening in 2022, founder and owner Josh Spencer's vision for the space has been "deep, dark, weird and hard." Indeed, Skull-Face is imbued with a sense of magic, mystery and punk-rock possibility.
Nearly every inch of the walls is covered by posters, mostly of vintage movies, music and comics: Wu-Tang Clan, Black Flag and the Smiths alongside the video game Space Invaders, Wicker Man and the original Planet of the Apes. Shelves curve throughout the cavernous space, with DVDs and vinyl LPs in the center. Books are categorized by themes like "Swords, Magic, Lasers & Spaceships" (a.k.a. sci-fi and fantasy) and "Gods & Monsters, Heroes & Legends" (mythology and folklore). The expansive comics and manga section is called "Superheroes and Weirdos," and "Weird Fiction" is a genre-defying category that makes sense when you see it.
In a post-Amazon, post-Borders and, some say, post-reading world, some might see opening a bookstore as quixotic, but Spencer doesn't. "We're always going to be drawn to talking about, reading about and looking at pictures of what we're into." That isn't just the marketing wisdom of a successful bookseller—Skull-Face is Spencer's fourth bookstore—it's a reflection of his relationship with the physical, material culture of reading, watching and listening.
Perhaps his best-known project is The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles, a West Coast book-lover's mecca. But Skull-Face is not just a Hawaii replica, says Spencer, who grew up between Hawaii and North Carolina. "The Last Bookstore is so large. It's an attempt to appeal to anyone. Skull-Face is me distilling my personal interests into one bookstore. I curate every single book. Every album, every movie we carry is something I like. I approach bookstores like creative projects. It's an excuse to exercise my artistic leanings, so I want to have fun with it. I want to give people something they're not expecting."
The name came about serendipitously. While sorting through books in his warehouse, two titles came across his desk: Skull-Face by Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian; and a manga called Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san. He took it as a sign. "It's a good name, a cool phrase. The more I thought about it, it reflected all my interests, from heavy metal and horror to fiction and fantasy to sword-and-sorcery, even military and action movies, war, ancient history," he says.
"Bookstores are refuges that bring people together under the auspices of the books—and also music and movies," Spencer says. "The bookstore is for everyone. Underneath it all, we're all skulls."
