Monday, July 23, 2007
New York Diary Pt.1 - Books
Greetings from the centre of the world.
There won't be any pictures in this blog, cos I'm writing from a hipster cafe on my PDA. My PDA has wifi but only displays a page at a time. It's a small sacrifice, however, for the street cred that a fullscreen PDA and unfoldable keyboard brings me, even in NYC, the home of fancy electronic devices, where to not carry something small, metal and electronic would mark you out as a pariah.
I'm in the upper west side, a few blocks from Columbia University. I just finished two hours of browsing at Labyrinth Books, the best academic/leftist bookstore I know in NYC.
Actually, NYC still has bookstores run by leftwing groups. But Revolution Books, run by the Revolutionary Communist Party, won't let you walk in without by a copy of their paper, and ideally a volume of Bob Avakian's Selected Works. The Socialist Workers Party USA bookshop is hidden in a westside office block by docks and a convention centre - a suitably industrial neighbourhood, but it's on the 13th floor, which is hard to find. And when you go there, one of the communist nerds who run it follow you around saying, "That's a good book on women in Cuba. That's a good book on the Cuban military. That's a half-price special - only $30 for Fidel Castro celebrating the Bay of Pigs victory." International Publishers, the old Communist Party imprint, doesn't actually have a bookstore. Which is probably due to their staff being old and crochety, as I found out when I met them at last March's Left Forum, where this severe white-haired lady refused to make eye contact with me. Bluestockings, the feminist bookstore, is good but a little small and in the Lower East Side, an hour away.
There won't be any pictures in this blog, cos I'm writing from a hipster cafe on my PDA. My PDA has wifi but only displays a page at a time. It's a small sacrifice, however, for the street cred that a fullscreen PDA and unfoldable keyboard brings me, even in NYC, the home of fancy electronic devices, where to not carry something small, metal and electronic would mark you out as a pariah.
I'm in the upper west side, a few blocks from Columbia University. I just finished two hours of browsing at Labyrinth Books, the best academic/leftist bookstore I know in NYC.
Actually, NYC still has bookstores run by leftwing groups. But Revolution Books, run by the Revolutionary Communist Party, won't let you walk in without by a copy of their paper, and ideally a volume of Bob Avakian's Selected Works. The Socialist Workers Party USA bookshop is hidden in a westside office block by docks and a convention centre - a suitably industrial neighbourhood, but it's on the 13th floor, which is hard to find. And when you go there, one of the communist nerds who run it follow you around saying, "That's a good book on women in Cuba. That's a good book on the Cuban military. That's a half-price special - only $30 for Fidel Castro celebrating the Bay of Pigs victory." International Publishers, the old Communist Party imprint, doesn't actually have a bookstore. Which is probably due to their staff being old and crochety, as I found out when I met them at last March's Left Forum, where this severe white-haired lady refused to make eye contact with me. Bluestockings, the feminist bookstore, is good but a little small and in the Lower East Side, an hour away.
Labels: books, New York City, socialism
