Autobooks-Aerobooks

Look to your right for a narrow storefront with a big reputation: Autobooks-Aerobooks. It looks like a simple bookstore, but it's a Burbank landmark — founded in 1951 and, by many accounts, one of the oldest and largest bookstores in the country devoted entirely to two subjects: automobiles and airplanes.

That's not a random pairing in this town. Long before Burbank was a studio capital, it was an aviation capital. Lockheed built aircraft here by the thousands, and during the Second World War the entire Lockheed plant and airport were hidden beneath an enormous camouflage net — a fake suburb of netting, canvas houses, and rubber trees — to disguise them from the air. The airport that early fliers like Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh once used is still just up the road. This shop keeps that engine-and-airframe heritage on its shelves, in several thousand titles on cars, motorcycles, and aircraft.

It's exactly the kind of hyper-specialized, expert-run place that has all but vanished from American main streets, and it survives on genuine devotion. Owners Tina Van Curen and Chuck Forward have run it since 2007, and they host regular signings with racing drivers and automotive writers. The car-obsessed comedian Jay Leno is a well-known regular — fitting for a neighborhood locals half-jokingly call “Nerd Central,” a place organized entirely around people's passions.

That phrase is a good one to carry with you, because it captures the whole street. Trains, records, horror, vintage, movie props, and now cars and planes — Magnolia Park is a strip of deep, specific enthusiasms, each with a storefront to match. Step inside and flip through a book on a car you loved as a kid, or an airplane you've only seen in photos. Then we'll continue toward the neighborhood's old-fashioned grocery — and its legendary weekend barbecue.