Beauty seen in imperfection at ECHO

What is old is beautiful at ECHO Vintage Books & Vinyl on Fowler Street in downtown Fort Myers.

FLORIDA WEEKLY PHOTO EVAN WILLIAMS Kosmas "Koz" Ballis and Christine Jordan-Ballis It's in the scratched-up wood floor, the shelves crammed with 20th century novels and the worn grooves of thousands of used records, one of which is usually spinning on a turntable inside the front door.

The rock n' roll of The Faces, circa Rod Stewart, drifted through ECHO's rooms last Saturday morning, where owners Christine Jordan-Ballis and Kosmas "Koz" Ballis keep about 25 percent of their collection. In 2006, they bought 250,000 books and records from a Florida man's estate.

"We like the old stuff," Koz said. "I think it's cool to be surrounded by all this old stuff."

Used vinyl, for instance. They keep nearly 100,000 albums: classical, punk, rock, jazz - little is missing.

"There just isn't anything we don't have," Jordan-Ballis said. "It's just finding it. The thrill of the hunt."

She prefers vinyl, and said kids who grew up with CDs got a flattened-out, watereddown version of music.

"When they were listening to records in analog they weren't listening to the same sound over and over," Jordan-Ballis said. "When you're listening to grooves all day, you're gonna get a little something different. That's why people say there's a warmth to it."

She feels the same about old books. ECHO has about 20,000 of them. Some are obscure and out-ofprint like "The Last Parallel: A Marine's War Journal," published in 1967. Most are first editions, like Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood."

Jordan-Ballis challenges, "Where else can you find a 1904, three-volume edition of "The Recollection of the Private Life of Napoleon?"

Probably in some eclectic bookstore in New York City - which is exactly the feel ECHO achieves with its tall, crowded shelves. And to Jordon-Ballis, the books are more than just readable; they're also worthy of respect and admiration as physical objects.

"When you're a bookseller and collector, these books are your children," she said. "It's just art. Everything here is art."

And not just the Shakespeare.

Local artists also command wall-space. For instance, Vyd, whose enormous Jackson Pollock esque canvas dominates a wall behind the cash register. Or Koz, who is an internationally award-winning sculptor. His ceramic pieces look like brightly colored meltdowns of urban detritus, with pipes, dolls and other things arranged in strange harmony.

Part of the theme, he said, is "what's old is new."

"I've always had a good appreciation for the past, the old, the theatrical, the arts," Koz said.

His father is a theatre director in Jacksonville, where Koz grew up.

Jordan-Ballis' also grew up in an eclectic family. She was raised in New York by an English father and first-generation Japanese- American mother, who imported fabrics.

Ballis still has a fondness for Easterninfluenced prints and Japanese paintings. A clay vase she made is displayed above the doorway, and is covered with a mosaic made of broken china, which was inspired by her childhood.

But maybe the thing that inspires her most is the decade she said defined her: the 1970s. The feel of it is everywhere at ECHO.

"When I'm watching 'That 70s Show,' (I'm thinking) I was in those clothes in high school," Jordan-Ballis said.

A room she dubbed, "The Metaphysical Room," is her ode to the decade's proclivities. It's filled with vintage Playboy magazines, tasteful nudes, antique ashtrays, a Life magazine featuring a joint being smoked, 70s clothes and a bookshelf dedicated to sex. Mick Jagger's face stares out at you calmly from a poster on the wall.

"In retail, you have to diversify your inventory," she said. "We like to think that everybody who comes in here finds something."

The women's restroom, for example, is also a fitting room filled with vintage ladies clothes - mostly from the '70s. (About the 1980s, she said, "I think we should kind of forget that, with the big hair and the spandex.")

And they also sell coffee in a nook between two rooms, an organic blend called Raven's Brew is for sale. The mugs and bags are covered in psychedelic art.

"It's sooo 'Grateful Dead,'" Ballis gushes.

There's also a fresh pot of coffee ready. And nearby, a collection of cookbooks that contain the obscure jewel "Rainy Day Cookbook: recipes compiled by the Coast Guard Wives of Sitka, Alaska."

Past the coffee, near the back of the house, volumes about war are kept away from the record player, where it's quiet - much more fitting for someone reading about a bloody battle, Ballis thought.

She noted the shop is popular with some professors who like the history, and youths who like the smell.

"They love the incense and the old books," she said. "They love the aesthetic of the place. The ones who are into books and records - who have that quality - they love it. They can't leave."