After he was referred to as a “balding intellectual” in a newspaper article, he founded, in mock outrage, another group: S.F.D.B.I. — the Society for the Defense of Balding Intellectuals. (Sign me up.) He helped finance albums by Country Joe and the Fish, the Berkeley-based psychedelic band perhaps best known its performance of “I Feel Like I’m Fixin to Die Rag,” a Vietnam War protest song, at Woodstock.

I could keep going about Moskowitz. If you want to know more, look for a copy of “Radical Bookselling: A Life of Moe Moskowitz,” a short, fond biography by his daughter, Doris Jo Moskowitz. She now runs Moe’s.

Under her watch the store has only gotten better. It remains a landmark, one of America’s very best bookstores and worth an epic detour to visit. It still feels a bit raffish, in the best sense. Moe’s four floors are packed with more than 200,000 new and used books, with copious sections on academic topics like Medieval Studies and philosophy.

Image The more you know about Moe Moskowitz (1921-1997), who opened the store in 1959, the Beatnik era, with his wife, Barbara, the more you want to know. Credit... via Doris Moskowitz

New and used books are shelved together (as dream-bookstores always do it) , and the store’s rare book room is a sprawling cabinet of wonders. The store it will most resemble, for Easterners, is The Strand in Manhattan.