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GUIDE TO YELLOW SPR INGS  |  2020 – 2021 51 Antioch College graduates, Bob Devine and Michael Boaz, got their foot in the door when they started a psy- chedelic art gallery of black light posters in its back room. At the opening, the Dayton Daily News called the gallery a “dash of Haight-Ashbury.” The “psychedelic-type” posters, they wrote, were gathered from San Francisco, New York and Chicago and set amidst flashing multicolored lights and San Francisco-sound music from groups such as Jefferson Airplane. Free food and coffee were on offer and the opening went from Friday night until 4 a.m. on Saturday. Devine and Boaz were referred to as “two clean- shaven young men” and were quoted as saying the posters would be the next popular art form, “especially since electric music is available to go with the electric art forms.” Soon after, Devine and Boaz bought the shop for a few hundred dollars and turned it into a new book store featuring literature, spiritual works and specialty titles, with the I-Ching at the core of the collection, accord - ing to Devine. They also sold records. For a few years, a complementary children’s book store operated in the building behind Epic called The Secret Hiding Place Where the Wild Things Are. In the 1970s, while still a Greenon High School stu- dent, Gail Lichtenfels began working at Epic, beginning a five-decade relationship with the shop. In 1974, she bought it for $1,000. Lichtenfels cultivated the shop’s metaphysical occult selection with titles in the areas of meditation, Eastern religion, mysticism, psychol - ogy, astrology, feminism, health and healing and more. In 1996, Lichtenfels moved Epic Book Shop from its original location to Dayton Street. In 2006, she added coffee service and commis - sioned Pierre Nagley to paint psychedelic clouds on the walls, launching the Mermaid Cafe. Lichtenfels ran Epic Book Shop for 35 years before clos- ing it in 2009 due to a decline in sales attributed to the rise of Amazon. But five years later she resurrected Epic in a space behind the Empo- rium that had been vacated by Main Squeeze. The latest incarnation is a used and new bookstore and commu- nity space for book signings, readings and meetings of a longtime Jungian study group. A lifelong booklover, Lichten- fels is proud that selling books is her life’s work. “I love the culture of books and I love the people who love the books,” she said. “It’s an honorable way to make a living.” —Megan Bachman Earth Rose, founded 1970 When Ed Oxley opened Earth Rose in August of 1970, he was just 23 years old. A native of Troy, Oxley said he came to Yellow Springs in 1969 to “drop out,” and appreciated the youthful energy of the college town, which at the time had 2,000 Antioch students. “When I came here, I just wanted to drop out and be self-employed — so I couldn’t get fired!” he recently told the News. That led Oxley to open Earth Rose, a store that sells a little bit of a lot of things, with an emphasis on Tiffany-style lamps, incense, Indian-print bedspreads, women’s clothing and Birkenstocks. Fifty years later, the shop is the longest- running business in Yellow Springs at the same location with the same owner. From the start, Oxley focused on imported hand- made goods. He recalled with a smile that at one point in the 1970s, Earth Rose sold more Birkenstocks than any other Ohio store — an average of nearly five pairs a day. He began stocking the “hippie” footwear after a visit from a Hare Krishna salesman in 1974. Oxley was skeptical at first that the sandals would sell. After all, they cost $29 a pair! But sell they did. Con- gresswoman and Antioch alum Eleanor Holmes Norton bought a pair years ago, Oxley recalled. Today, Earth Rose still carries a few styles of Birkenstocks. They’re displayed right up front, and cost $135. Times have changed, though. The shop is less a destination than it once was. Visitors to town now go in and out of many stores, but don’t necessarily purchase items from any one, Oxley said. Also putting a dent in his business was the open- ing of the Mall at Fairfield Commons in 1993, the rise and proliferation of big box stores and other local stores selling similar imports..“I used to sell a lot of clothes, tapestries and bedspreads,” he said. “I used to sell a lot of everything.” The shop now has a sedate, somewhat quaint air. Customers who enter take a big step up and push hard at the inward-swinging heavy purple door. Oxley greets them, and they look around. Maybe they buy something — a carved wooden box, a woolen sweater from the Andes, a cloth bag from India with little mirrors stitched into the fabric. Or maybe they don’t. Either way, when they leave, Oxley calls out the same genial phrase: “Stop back in sometime.” For 50 years, people have. —Audrey Hackett Ohio Silver, founded 1971 Handcrafted silver jewelry from around the world has been on hand on Xenia Avenue for nearly a half century. PHOTO: AUDREY HACKETT Earth Rose owner Ed Oxley opened the store 50 years ago. PHOTO: DIANE CHIDDISTER Local artist Marcia Wallgren has been at the helm of Ohio Silver since 1974.