Thursday, June 19, 2008

Literary Sadness

My friends,

If you don't already know, I am quite saddened to inform you that the used boookstore on W. 25th street is shuttering for the last time at the end of this month. The store is a crown jewel in my W 25th neighborhood and I will really, really miss it. It is too late to shop there as a good deed, but if you are looking to expand your personal library on the cheap, I'd pop in the store soon if I were you.

In the meantime, I'm off to meet an entirely different Cleveland lit scene curmudgeon: Harvey Pekar. Honestly, I'm pretty ambivalent about old Harvey, even more so after having an indirect chance encounter with his name-dropping spouse, but my friend is a big fan so I'm going to try to scare up a cheap copy of something Pekar wrote and get it signed for him.

In the meantime, like anyone reading this even needs the reminder, but just in case -- KEEP BUYING LOCAL. This era of free trade agreements and corporate explosion makes it tougher and tougher to do so, and if we don't go out of our way to try, we'll lose something intangible about ourselves.

2 comments:

that girl said...

That is so sad. I've bought so much from that bookstore since I was in high school and now that that and City Buddha is gone, I no longer have all the nice places to go to when I go to the Market...

CB said...

Yeah, I agree. Add to your list the fact that Dish is apparently looking for a new location, the various iterations of Latino food are struggling, and a few months back the community cafe by the Old Angle went down. Anymore, the only places that seem to survive/thrive are high-dollar/fancy scenes like Flying Fig and Bar Cento or institution like the brewery (all of which I really like, by the way). And the Garage Bar folks are apparently opening a sushi place.

Welcome to Warehouse District, Part Deux: The Near West Side Edition.

I gotta move.