Good morning.

(Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

It is usually jazz that plays in the background at Eso Won Books, a cherished independent bookseller in Los Angeles that for almost three decades has catered to African-American readers, but sometimes it is David Bowie, Nirvana or just really loud rock music.

James Fugate came to Los Angeles from Detroit in the late 1980s, and after a short time running the bookstore at Compton College, he and his partners opened their own store in South Los Angeles. The bookstore has been open nearly every day since — only once or twice, in Mr. Fugate’s memory, has it closed. Once, he said, was in 2006, when Barack Obama, then a senator, came to town for a book signing and the crowds were too large for his shop to accommodate.

February is Black History Month, and there are still events to catch all over the city — at the Los Angeles Public Library, which is hosting art exhibitions, dance performances and a genealogy workshop; at the California African-American Museum; and the Aquarium of the Pacific, which is hosting a festival this weekend. (For listings of events, click here and here.)

And at Eso Won Books, whose space has long been a gathering place for black intellectual life in the Leimert Park neighborhood of South Los Angeles, every month is Black History Month. Two presidents have visited — Mr. Obama and Bill Clinton — and Ta-Nehisi Coates has called Eso Won his favorite bookstore in the world. These days the store’s best-selling book is “When They Call You a Terrorist,” by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter. “Fire and Fury,” the inside look at the Trump White House by Michael Wolff, has also been a big seller.