L'Elephant Terrible

After nearly three weeks away from home, I’m missing many things about New York – things like lightning-fast wifi, shops that are open past 5pm, and the ability to choose from more than two skirts and three shirts on any given day. But South Africa really has Brooklyn beat in one particular respect – indoor/outdoor retail spaces that my husband has derisively dubbed “hipster malls.”

A confluence of cheap industrial space, rapid gentrification, and an emerging creative class has led to the rise of this unique breed of place in which abandoned alleyways and warehouses find new life as winding warrens of cool boutiques, restaurants, and coffee shops. They’re one part Smorgasburg, one part Union Square Holiday Market, and one part classic mall. I love them.

My favorite “hipster mall” of all is the 44 Stanley complex in Milpark Johannesburg, in large part because it’s home to a gorgeous used bookstore called L’Elephant Terrible. Wolf and Gundi Weinek moved from Austria to South Africa and later opened L’Elephant Terrible, naming it for their shared love of both elephants and Jean Cocteau’s 1929 novel Les Enfants Terrible.  Gundi now runs it on her own after her husband’s death six years ago. When I stumbled upon her shop, she was presiding over it elegantly – her feet crossed at her ankles, a cappuccino in hand, and her head lowered into a book. Later, when I bought Lionel Abrahams’ The Celibacy of Felix Greenspan – I read about him in Portrait With Keys – Gundi told me that she and her husband were once friends with him and that they knew Ivan Vladislavic too! It’s amazing how such a big world can feel so small sometimes.