NYC: How Great Is The Strand Bookstore?

boo!

(although their new art section is sweet)

Plus, it don't smell as bad in there anymore!

I got burnt a bit by them recently (my refund check was only for the price of the book and not the tax wtf???) but it's not like I still don't go.

ARE YOU 14?

when I first moved to NYC, there were several small dusty eccentric used book stores on 4th avenue which runs behind the Strand and the old Vilage Voice office. Apparently that obscure block was once the "used book district" like in the 40s/50s/60s, long gone by the time I got there.

I used to like the bookstores that are/were on 18th or so, where the original Academy is/was?

Powell's in Portland is my Strand.

xpost heh did you?

The review-copy digging is pretty satisfying.

http://img276.imageshack.us/img276/5664/12995113096qo.jpg

at what bookstore can you expect such a thing?

not in the back at fulton st where there's a guy who has a computer listing what they have and don't have and can look it up in 2 seconds and usually isn't doing much of anything else

yeah, see, powell's was what i expected a big, famous bookstore to be. i had a good time there. i don't know why the strand doesn't seem fun to me, just being in there feels like kind of a chore.

E.g. a few weeks ago I couldn't find any Sontag criticism at the Strand, which was unsurprising and fine; I knew I could find it at Labyrinth, where if they didn't have it I'd be surprised and bothered. Similarly if I wanted a copy of Rubber Soul I'd feel more sure of finding it in Tower Records than at Vintage Vinyl.

Gah, Waldenbooks. I had a depressing experience trying to find something by Saul Bellow at a Waldenbooks in a mall once. All they had was Ravelstein.

Reading the thread again, I have been thinking about the discrepancy between my experience of the shop and other people's - for I found almost nothing that was desirable, in good condition, and a decent price. It really did not seem a good deal, all in all. And this disappointed, as the place has been talked up so much by so many.

But Geeta's Port Authority analogy is OTM. There's very little to find lovable or even awesome about the Strand except its size. Though I also don't find Powell's -- at least, the main Powells -- to be all that lovable, even though it is certainly better organized. (Some of the specialty branches, since as Powells Technical, which feature the store cats and a bunch of 1980s home computers, or the smaller Powells Hawthorne branch are much more lovable.)

There is/was a bookstore around the corner from Powells called Alabaster (I think -- I always referred to it, jokingly, as Albatross) which is very small and has a somewhat generic used bookstore selection but I was always more successful at running into odd things that I didn't know I wanted there than at the Strand. The Strand seems to have a lot of filler. Plus in a small bookstore you notice more quickly what's new since the last time you went in, which makes it all more efficient, and you get a better sense of how long it takes to sell some book that's been sitting there for months, which is more interesting.

I also miss the mess, in a way. But I like the clean air - it could get pretty funky in there during summer months.

I still stand by the greatness of Strand's Film section ( I still wait for the day when Melville On Melville will pop up there for a few bucks), their Art floor and the store's ability to present me with something great 9 out of 10 times I walk in there. Who needs "lovable"?

OTM. Also, a lot of their stuff seems overpriced. Apart from that, though, it's hard for a humongous used bookstore to go too far wrong. It'll always be fun to browse anyway, even if you don't always find something you want to buy at a good price. I like the one downtown on Fulton Street too. I used to go there during lunch breaks when I worked in the financial district.

http://www.pixelsurgeon.com/reviews/review.php?id=594

:D

📣 We need your help. This is the post we hoped to never write, but today marks a huge turning point in The Strand's history. Our revenue has dropped nearly 70% compared to last year, and the loans and cash reserves that have kept us afloat these past months are depleted. pic.twitter.com/mI074pigZu

— Strand Book Store (@strandbookstore) October 23, 2020

ok thanks to that thread it appears the owner is quite sus

Ron Wyden's wife

It's an extremely sus campaign.

save barnes and noble!

Skip the Strand and walk a couple blocks south to Mercer St. Books

if you want to save an indie bookstore that is in trouble, buy something from labyrinth books in princeton. when i was in between jobs and feeling sorry for myself they took me in and gave me a solid gig with healthcare. i curated the used book room as well as the window displays and when i left the owner wrote me a solid letter of recommendation. what i am saying is they value input from their staff.

https://www.labyrinthbooks.com/

i've heard that the strand is not such a great place to work.

BINC is a bookstore support organization that has been doing grants for COVID and fire relief, they may have a way for people to donate to that.

I hope Mast Books is doing ok, really loved visiting that place on my rare visits to NYC.

I wonder how Unnameable is doing, both in Bkln and Amherst.

xp i love mast books, too. the circadian press made these neat "unofficial" fan club membership cards, which seems like a neat way to support the shop (all proceeds go to mast):

https://www.thecircadianpress.com/product/mast-books-fan-club-membership-card-free-shipping

People like the strand
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/books/the-strand-bookstore-nyc.html
tbh _I_ like the strand; it fed my collector addiction for a few years when i finally had a bit of money. not been by since i moved to digital. It is where my partner and i met on our first date though!

that said:
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/strike-at-the-strand-bookstore-the-comic/

It was kind of interesting, especially for a NY outsider, to see the wild shifts in tone from tweet to tweet with various people either shitting on The Strand for this plea to others with really sincere and heartfelt requests to help a beloved institution.

Tbh their poetry selection had always sucked! Never had time for it.

Don’t sleep on this thread, started by our old friend and continued by me and others.

https://www.labyrinthbooks.com/

― treeship., Saturday, October 24, 2020 4:15 PM (four days

This was my favorite store in middle school, on 112th street. One of the partners bought out the other partner and now it is Book Culture. He also bought Papyrus books on 114 and B'way and a couple of others. The Book Culture store still has a really great, well curated new releases section in the lobby, and some good remainders. More tchotchkes than they used to sell, i guess. They now have aisles roped off for Columbia coursebooks and haven't let me browse, you know, when i've wanted to see what certain courses were reading and maybe put myself through it. Liked it better when it was Labyrinth books.