It is rather peculiar looking. It’s gray and looks rather narrow with a white door and a large open display window. You aren’t sure what is sold there, though you gather from its name it could be books, but then you question how the hammer in its logo factors into any of this.

Page Against the Machine is a 400-square-foot pocket on Retro Row adjoined to a home goods shop, a jewelry store and a restaurant. Despite its narrow appearance, as soon as you walk into the bookstore you are struck by its spacious, modern look with pops of red and white and music ranging from the Beatles to Rage Against the Machine (“In the right light, study becomes insight!“)

This is a relatively new, fiercely independent bookstore; a fact that makes you happy about its present, concerned for its future and hopeful that owner Chris Giaco’s desire that it become a place to not only accommodate but spark community, activism and inspiration, comes true.

“The function of this store is to provide books that are a little more unusual, a little more countercultural,” he says. “Things that aren’t traditionally given to people or put out there for people; so for people looking for the off-the-beaten-path of literature.”

Here you will find fiction, philosophy, politics, music, poetry and the “Post-Structuralist Vulva Coloring Book,” but if you’re looking for the latest New York Times Bestseller or hit new release, you probably won’t find it here. Fitzgerald? Sure. Kafka? Why not? (No, really, why?) You’ll also find “The Last of the Hippies” by Penny Rimbaud, and “The Prodigal Rogerson” by J. Hunter Bennett.

Never heard of those? Exactly what Giaco wants to hear. Amongst the books, you will find him, a passionate lover of words and politics who created a place for both.

“I thought, well that’s perfect with all the social issues that are coming to the floor, with politics the way they are, with all the stuff, it seemed like the right time and the right place for this store,” Giaco says.

If you envision him as some sort of frothy madman, a Quixotic character tilting at political or cultural windmills, think the opposite. Giaco is warm and welcoming; a jeans and T-shirt guy that got his first cellphone in January of this year, and only because he needed one to run the store.

The co-owner of the boutique next door, Marida Ngov, describes him as knowledgeable and sarcastic. She was excited that a bookstore was going to be opened because she felt, having been born and raised in Long Beach, the town needed another bookstore after so many others—RIP Dodd’s, Chelsea, Apostrophe, Acres of Books, Open, which lived, and died, just down from Page on Fourth Street—had closed down. She says it was a “happy surprise” that he decided to risk it financially and open one.

“When I moved to Long Beach in ‘96, I feel like I could reel off eight or 10 small bookstores that were still operating and now they’re all gone,” Giaco says. “And maybe, there’s really two or three bookstores here in Long Beach left. So, to me, there’s a bunch of people, like myself as a customer, who want a bookstore and the reality is it’s probably not a smart business proposition to build a giant warehouse full of books, but I think a small bookstore that has a targeted niche, I think people are hungry for that.”

Ever since Giaco was a young boy, reading has always been a part of his life. When he was in third grade, he recorded a list of books he read throughout the school year. He was a fan of mysteries such as The Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown. Every Wednesday, his mom would take him to the local library, where “… [the] maximum amount of books I could check out, I checked out.”

As a teenager, he read Mad Magazine (RIP) and books that any high schooler was assigned to read, i.e. “1984,” “Brave New World” and “The Jungle.” Although they were compelling, he felt that none of them impacted him as the books he would read later in his life.

In college when he began reading books outside of the required readings for his classes, though he does remember being fascinated by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Around that time, he read “No One Here Gets Out Alive,” Jerry Hopkins’ biography of Jim Morrison and found it revelatory, leading him to read other literature mentioned in the book that he otherwise would never have thought to read; poetry by Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s “Journey to the End of the Night.”

“Once I started reading literature and poetry and philosophy and sociology and realizing all these other things were out there and that maybe the things that I was taught and had taken for granted as being true, on further inspection, weren’t as true as I thought. Or, at least, warranted further investigation,” Giaco says. “That’s the beauty of books, it really is like magic; it can change your whole outlook like that.”

He spent three and a half years in college before deciding to leave without a degree: two years as an accounting major, then switched to political science for a year and a half, changing both majors and schools. Two years away from graduating and Giaco felt lost, so he left school. Of course, he was still constantly reading, but now he sorely needed a job. So he walked to his local bookstore, asked if they were hiring and “never left in one form or another.”

Eventually, he would own his own store, a vintage outfit called In Retrospect that also carried general-interest, design and fashion books. It was an “odd-ball part” in his life as he came to the store through someone he’d worked with at the Long Beach Museum of Art.

On the fourth Friday of every month, the store did a pop-up shop that had more of what is seen in Page―niche books geared towards a specific audience seeking content that isn’t mainstream. He had great feedback from the pop-up shop but didn’t see much in the way of possibility beyond Fridays.

When In Retrospect closed, Giaco remembered the pop-up shop and decided to go for it. The space he has right now was originally part of the neighboring boutique, California Drifters and Marida Jewelry owned by Cassandra Malone and Marida Ngov respectively. It was used as a pop-up art space but became difficult to manage.

The owners reached out to him in March, 2018, but since it was only a month after Giaco closed In Retrospect, he declined. In autumn of last year, they asked him again and, by then, he thought about the idea of the bookstore and the “vibe of the world” and said yes.

He feared the landlord wouldn’t like the liberal message and so he was surprised to find they loved the name, inspired by Rage Against the Machine. In fact, the name was so perfect that Giaco assumed it had already been taken.

“I remembered one of the albums had in the sleeve a picture of all the books that inspired them,” he says. “That was also the first band that I’ve seen that recommended literature and books and list of organizations to get involved. It left a big impression on me that a hard-core rock band had a viewpoint, a social conscious and were out there to further ideas, not just to play rock music.”

It was a quality he wanted Page Against the Machine to have, to be more than a bookstore by furthering ideas and discussion about issues in today’s society. The store finally opened on April 1 of this year, which more than a few people who know the shelf life of a bookstore thought rather fitting. Among them were family and friends who asked about him getting healthcare and a retirements plan. Giaco not only was undeterred but convinced this was his calling.

“I would literally have to bankrupt myself and get kicked out of my house and store not to want to sell books and be involved with books in some way,” he says. “Being addicted to books is the best thing… I’m an unapologetic book hoarder.”

His home is filled with books, and bookshelves, floor to ceiling. He jokes he is “petrified about moving” because he doesn’t have enough friends to help him carry all the books. As for the bookstore, Giaco is surprised by all the positive feedback—the store’s five-star Yelp rating includes reviews like “This is one of my fave new spots,” his only disappointment being a dislike to an Instagram post during Women’s History Month promoting a 20% off sale for women to represent the gender wage gap; a commenter called the gap “fake.”

The community of book lovers residing in Long Beach welcomed Giaco just the same as he welcomes customers entering his nook. Many come in and thank him for being there. Independent publishing companies such as Brown Paper Press have reached out to him, excited to drop off some of their books.

“I think we are lucky to have him there,” says Jane Sprague, a customer who visits the store every two weeks as she conveniently lives right around the corner. “What I like about Page Against the Machine is that it’s carefully curated. It has a certain vibe and a smart social justice vibe; a sensibility. It’s what makes you like independent bookstores―an individual feel. I think he has a chance, it’s nice and it has a really good selection even though it’s really small.”

Giaco believes it only proves that people still want local bookstores and to buy physical books even as technology advances. While realistically, not many people buy books, two or three people may drop by in one hour to browse and go out with a book or two… or none. Giaco understands that it’s not a bookstore for everyone, but it’s a bookstore with a purpose to provoke thought as books have always done for him.

“Books can fill your head with all sorts of crazy ideas,” Giaco says, laughing as he quietly tucks a book back on its shelf.

Page Against the Machine is located at 2714 E 4th St. For more information, click here.