A newly opened pop-up shop at WestBend hopes to bring people together around a common love — books.
Commonplace Books is now open at 1701 River Run, Ste. 161, and will remain in the space for a year. The store will celebrate its grand opening June 22 with a 15 percent discount for customers and complementary wine and beer served that evening. Commonplace will also launch a weekly children’s story time, starting that Saturday at 10:30 a.m. The store is open Monday – Saturday from 10 a.m. − 7 p.m.
Not every title is on the shelf, but rather a curated collection of books categorized according to the interests of the reader. Some sections include Insider, Historian, Mystic, Intentionalist and Collector, along with a section for Littles tucked in a back room so young readers can enjoy their own space. The shop also has complimentary coffee and plans to add more hospitality elements soon.
Ben Nockels is one of owners, along with Scott and Jason Carr and Scott Johnson. They opened their original bookstore in Oklahoma City, with a similar pop-up in 2016, before putting down permanent roots in 2017.
The Fort Worth shop is smaller than the one in Oklahoma City (Fort Worth’s is about 1,000 square feet while Oklahoma City’s is about 3,000), but Nockels says he finds many similarities between the two cities, with Fort Worth’s casual atmosphere and tons of urban renewal projects.
"This is really in our DNA," Nockels says. "We've always thought that Commonplace might eventually become a community of bookstores. WestBend invited us to come visit Fort Worth about six months ago, and we got to know the city and the development."
Commonplace also has an agenda — the owners seek to create a shop that invites patrons to "imagine, linger and question their world," Nockels says.
"Over 2,000 books are published each week, so we decided to focus our attention on recent releases, and the selection turns over rapidly,” he says. “We want to present something that people didn't even know they were looking for.”