St. Mark's Bookshop

St Mark’s Bookshop is a strange-looking building. This may be a symptom of its location, on Third Ave between 8th and 9th Streets, as the centerpiece of a triangle of land created by crisscrossing Stuyvesant St. The store inside looks like a lopsided trapezoid, but the designers made the most of the space; there are shelves everywhere, contorted at all angles to fit.
The front of the shop houses new releases, a large selection of critical theory books and some more unique sections, such as Folklore and Anarchism. A large black wall of periodicals stands in the back of the room, next to the sale section, which consists of mostly art books and biographies.
The shelves themselves resemble pieces of modern artwork. The books sit on rows of shiny black metal, held together by what looks like steel plumbing pipes. Each shelf has its own little ceiling, sheets of fogged glass held together by flaking gold bars. Every ceiling has three lights attached, illuminating the books below.
Getting further information about the store was a strain on my budding reporting skills; I’d hoped to interview the man behind the search computer, until I overheard him mutter a few expletives under his breath at a customer who bumped into a stack of periodicals, sending them sliding to the floor for him to pick up.
I spent the next half hour pacing around the literature section, terrified, but when I eventually dredged up the courage to approach Peter Riley at his computer desk, I discovered he was compassionate and helpful.
He told me that the bookshop stays open every evening until midnight, which draws a surprising amount of people because of the restaurants in the area, and also because not much else is open so late during the week.
“Usually we end up shooing people away,” he said. “There’s always a collective moan at midnight when the lights out go out.”
The shop has readings two Thursdays a month at Solas, a bar on 9th St. The authors that participate will often sign a batch of their books and donate to them to the store. Amazingly, the owners do not charge extra for these books. I was charmed by this blatant lack of marketing wisdom; it was totally egalitarian, like something a bookstore would do back in the Sixties maybe, but never today.
“We aren’t trying to scam anyone,” Peter said. “There are cynical people out there, and I’m sure a book or two of ours has ended up on Ebay, but what can you do?”
Peter also told me that when authors based in New York write new books, they will often come by and sign some for the store, even if they are not participating in a reading. The most recent author to do so is musician Patti Smith, who autographed her new memoir, Just Kids.
“Independent bookstores in this area used to be thriving,” Peter said. “Now we are one of the last ones standing. Most of these New York authors come by and sign their books for old times’ sake. They remember us at least.”

East Village Books

Erica Martin

Blog 1: East Village Books

99 St. Mark's Place (between Ave. A & First Ave.)

New York, NY 10009

(212) 477-8647

http://buyusedbooksnewyork.com/default.aspx

The door to East Village Books is red and crooked in its frame, with colored wood cutouts nailed to its front. The doorknob doesn’t turn all the way, so it’s a pain to push open. The store inside is long and skinny, with unfinished wood shelves along all the walls and down the middle of the room.

The books are organized by genre, including a section called “Anti This Establishment,” a jumbled collection of counterculture literature from the Beats to Lenny Bruce to Hunter S. Thompson. Donald, a longtime employee of the bookshop, calls this his favorite section because it holds books by Charles Bukowski, a writer who rarely appears in chain bookstores.

Donald is in his mid-forties, with glasses and a gray crew cut. He spoke in a rasp, and did not smile, but he was very talkative, and kept asking about the journalism program at NYU. He also introduced me to his son, a twelve year old boy sitting behind the desk, who did not look up from his computer.

“Karma,” Donald said, when I asked him why East Village Books has done so well for itself. “And location. We are also very aggressive in buying, and do our best to pay the most for your book.” East Village Books does pay well, but they only buy about one in fifty books that are brought to them.

“We don’t carry anything mainstream,” Donald said. “There’s no reason to. If people want the popular thing, they go to Barnes and Nobles.” He was right; I saw almost no recent bestsellers in the store, except a copy of The Nanny Diaries in the fiction section that seemed particularly out of place.

East Village Books deals often in estate libraries. They purchase books from poor old literature fiends who die and leave their libraries to relatives that don’t appreciate them. Donald showed me a collection they had just bought, a set of novels by all the classic authors; Dostoyevsky, Faulkner, Hemingway and the like. He expressed concern about whether they would sell. The books were bound in red leather with swirling patterns on the spine, the titles painted in gold.

“Those are beautiful,” I said.

“Yeah, I suppose they are,” said Donald. “But our philosophy books sell better.”

East Village Books also sells prints by Helmut Newton, a German photographer who apparently specialized in naked women. His complete works sells for $15,000, and the store sells individual prints for $100 each, which they bought from “some dead guy,” as Donald told me. He said that customers purchase the prints “not frequently, but often enough. A guy bought 7 prints once, and that really makes your day.”

The section of the store I found most intriguing is called “Backyard Books.” It’s a small outdoor area, behind a green door, protected from the elements only by a blue tarp. The books here are only a dollar or two. Some are useless; faded cookbooks with pictures of Martha Stuart looking about fifteen years old, and psychotherapy texts from the 1970’s. But I also saw some good novels, such as Vineland by Thomas Pyncheon, which were cheaper than I have seen them elsewhere.

Donald did smile once, as I said goodbye and shook his hand.

“Don’t let NYU get to you,” he said, as I struggled to twist open the door.

Introduction

I learned to crawl on the floor of a bookstore. My parents are literature fanatics, and from my infanthood onward they brought me from one used bookstore to another, often setting my brother and me down so they could frolic in another aisle. When they picked us up again, our little knees were ringed with gray dust. I don’t remember this myself, of course, but I’d like to think my fascination with books started there, on a bookshop floor. I’m writing this blog for people who see an independent bookstore not as a cheap place to buy textbooks or a cultural hangout for the hipster hierarchy, but as a haven for those who read.