Sylvan is a "ghost" village in West Williams Township which is now part of the municipality of North Middlesex. There's not a lot happening in Sylvan, except for a bookstore that's open on the weekends. I had to check this place out because it's out of the way and in an unusual location for a bookstore.
The outside of the bookstore looked like it's in an old gas station office or general store turned into a diner, turned into a garden center, turned into a bookstore. The pumps were long gone. All the greenery was slowly taking over. Remnants of a diner survive on the windows as you can still see Coca-Cola ads stuck on the glass.
The inside was different. Its appearance was a cross between a decent flea market booth in Grand Bend and City Lights Bookshop from London taking a day-trip to parts unknown. When you first open the door to the store, the first thing you see are postcards of vintage paperback and pulp fiction novels cover art. I knew there was a scent of hipness in the air in the midst of a grizzled land, and the only people that can pull this stunt are the grizzled hipsters.
(Grizzled Hipsters don't have the metrosexual look like some urban hipsters have, but they definitely don't take in the Kentucky Waterfall look either.)
I scored some postcards and local history book on Vanished Villages of Middlesex County. I'll probably go back there in a couple of weeks.
