Artistic Roots

Bloor St. West location


Test Pattern dress

Motherboard skirt

Roots x Douglas Coupland: offical site

Coupland's Cool Canadiana
Artist shares his vision in new clothing line for Roots

Contact the Author

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Dating Tools

Ugh. This guy??

The Goodbye Girl
_________________________________________________

Speed Tweeting

This little birdie can fly.

Conan's on Twitter

If anyone has any doubt about Twitter being the next powerhouse communication tool, consider this: Conan O'Brien posted a single, solitary tweet 5 hours ago and now he has 174,006 followers. Talk about an ego boost. How long, do you think, before he breaks a million? It's no secret we're all waiting for the next Conan project - be it on TV or the Internet - but in the meantime we've got his tweets to keep us going. I hope he keeps it up, cause you know he'll make even walking the dog sound funny. Yes, he's back! And I just want to say, Thank you, NBC, for firing Conan and saving comedy.

Ok, make that 180,567...

UPDATE 1
[02.25.10]
Has my point about Twitter sunken in yet? No? Well then, look at it this way: If Conan had posted a message on his Facebook "wall", there's no fucking way it would've reached over a quarter of a million people in less than 24 hours. None. When it comes to outreach, Facebook's exclusivity bites it in the ass. It's great for organizing parties, but not for organizing events - especially major ones. Let's face it, on the Information Superhighway, Twitter's a bullet train to Facebook's rusty shopping cart with the squeaky wheel that's always veering left.

So, if Conan and his crew put out a casting call for their next project, which medium would get the word out faster and to more people? Facebook or Twitter? And if you - as a writer/comedian/agent - want to get the jumpstart over everyone else, then which medium are you going to monitor more closely? Facebook or Twitter? If you chose the former, then you just lost your place in line, and possibly your shot at the opportunity of a lifetime. These days, who can afford to wait?

Let's make that 340,394...

UPDATE 2
[02.26.10]
Conan on Twitter: 377,647 followers and counting... (after 2 days and 2 tweets)
Conan on Facebook: His largest fan group has 41,709 fans (search results)

From the numbers above, you can see that when it comes to crowdsourcing capabilities, Twitter blasts Facebook out of the water and into outer space. If Conan's smart (and we all know he is), he's working on a project right now with the intent of promoting it no later than the summer. By firing him, NBC gave him the best publicity money can't buy, and he'll want to capitalize on the momentum of public interest before it runs cold. After all, in the age of Twitter, popularity has a shelf life of days, if not hours. I'd say Conan's lucky the entertainment world - in particular comedy - is a stale environment right now. It takes Herculean efforts to launch something on TV and on the Internet there's what? Funny or Die videos? C'mon, he's in the perfect position to blow our minds, and if he's half the "genius" people say he is, he'll do just that (before fall 2010).

UPDATE 3
[03.02.10]
Looks like Conan and his writers are getting ready to tickle our comedy tastebuds once again. From the comments: Are you really going to do a live show? When and where? Boston I hope!

+Conan O'Brien Eyeing Live Tour

UPDATE 4
[03.03.10]
Conan's number of followers has surpassed the half million mark. He now has 503,497 followers after 7 days and 8 tweets. Jay Leno who??
__________________________________________________

NEW POSTS
Japanese Bullets
Funki Porcini
Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Wild Man
NO B.O.
__________________________________________________

40 Under 40

WELCOME to Crain's Forty Under 40 class of 2009. Despite the tough economy, Crain's has once again identified a diverse group of New Yorkers who have excelled in their respective fields, from fashion to TV to the world of nonprofits.

Catherine Moellering, 37
Best & Co., President
WHEN Catherine Moellering’s parents agreed to pay for her to attend Harvard University, they hoped she might become a doctor or lawyer, or at least an investment banker.

Looking back, Ms. Moellering says, her folks should have known she would end up in retail. As a child, while her siblings were building spaceships out of Legos, she was using the blocks to construct a credit card imprint machine so she could play Store.

After college, Ms. Moellering rose through the retail ranks swiftly. Her first post was in the Bloomingdales' management training program in New York City, working in the men’s neckwear department. After Bloomie’s, she moved to San Francisco to work for the Gap on a fledgling project called Old Navy, staying long enough to watch it go from about 15 locations to 585.

In 2001, she joined Liz Claiborne Inc. to hone her management skills. There, she helped oversee a handful of brands, including then-white-hot DKNY, and served under the tutelage of retail all-stars like Angela Ahrendts, now the chief of Burberry.

“She’s bright [and] intellectually curious,” says Paul Charron, former chief executive of Liz Claiborne. “I think she is going to be influential on the New York stage for a long time to come.”

In her latest role, Ms. Moellering became president of posh childrenswear maker Best & Co. last year, just in time for the collapse in retail spending. The luxury line, a 130-year-old company, had already been losing money for years $10 million in 2007 alone. To stanch the bleeding, she pared the company’s vendor list to 20 from 300 and launched a wholesale division to lure less-affluent customers to the brand.

“I just fell in love with it,” Ms. Moellering says. Though sales last year were just over $10 million, she predicts big things for the company. “I think this is a $100 million brand.”

Jonah Staw, 33
Miss Matched Inc., Chief executive
WHEN Jonah Staw goes to work in the morning, he gets to sit at a desk made of a bunk bed and drink chocolate root beer from his office’s new soda fountain.

“I realized I’d be most successful if I tap-danced on the table instead of being a conservative businessman,” says the co-founder of the LittleMissMatched brand of socks and accessories.

He’s always had an entrepreneurial spirit. At age 8, Mr. Staw started his own postcard company, drawing birdlike images on special paper to sell at local bookstores in Berkeley, Calif.

“As an 8-year-old, you’re rolling in dough if you can buy an extra pack of Now and Later candy,” he says.

After an early career as an architect he designed and built his own dream house and a stint at design firm Frog, Mr. Staw launched Miss Matched in 2004.

The quirky sock company has since expanded to pajamas and bedroom furniture and has an upcoming apparel line for tweens. Last year, revenue jumped 28% from 2007, to $32 million, and Mr. Staw says e-commerce sales grew 80%. The brand is carried at Macy’s, FAO Schwarz, Bed Bath & Beyond and at 3,000 specialty shops.

But that’s not the endgame. Despite the recession’s chilling effect on retail, Mr. Staw plans to open a store in Grand Central Terminal this spring and is searching for another location. The expansion is part of a business plan underwritten by private equity firm Catterton Partners.

“People get a good idea but are afraid to go forward on it,” says Doreen Lorenzo, chief executive of Frog and a former colleague of Mr. Staw’s. “Jonah left Frog to start this business, and that takes a lot of guts.”

Ed Rosenfeld, 33
Steve Madden Ltd., Chairman and chief executive
MICHIGAN native Ed Rosenfeld has been immersed in retail his whole life. Dinner table conversation while he was growing up revolved around the family business, specialty department store Jacobson’s, where he worked cleaning the bathrooms and operating the cash register. Just after graduating from Amherst College, he moved to New York and worked as a retail investment banker for Peter J. Solomon Co.

When he wanted a change, he didn’t stray from his roots. Last year, he took the helm of footwear and accessories giant Steven Madden Ltd.

“I got tired of advising clients. I wanted to make decisions and actually live with them,” he says.

Heading a $457 million retailer during one of the worst periods in shopping history has certainly given Mr. Rosenfeld reason to make decisions.

The firm is distributing new bargain labels at J.C. Penney and Walmart to appeal to strapped consumers and has teamed with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen on a high-end shoe line that will hit shelves of retailers such as Saks Fifth Avenue next month.

Though Mr. Rosenfeld could have used an easier first year, he has helped Madden weather the current economic storm better than most fashion firms. Same-store sales dipped only 0.5% for the fourth quarter, even as many other retailers have seen double-digit declines. In 2008, revenue grew 6%, though earnings dropped 21%.

Steve Madden, who founded the company nearly 20 years ago, says he relies on Mr. Rosenfeld’s steadiness.

“When things are unbelievable, he doesn’t jump up and down, and when things are bad, he does not panic,” says the footwear designer, comparing Mr. Rosenfeld’s calm to a “warm bath.”
__________________________________________________

LINK
You're a Douchebag
Accept it: your upscale lifestyle plants you squarely within the doucheoisie.
[EXCERPT]
THERE'S a fine line—a harrowingly fine one—between being the guy who sneeringly points out That Guy in public and actually being That Guy yourself. I am not, of course, suggesting that I’m anywhere near being a douchebag on the order of, say, bad-boy heir Brandon “Firecrotch” Davis. But a run-of-the-mill, everyday douchebag? Maybe sometimes. Possibly semi-often. The point is, the burgeoning class of people constantly calling other people douchebags are almost certainly members of the doucheoisie themselves. It’s the perfect insult for our times, because the insulter can congratulate himself for being provocative, slightly outré, a little extra nasty. But when it comes to wielding a word that originated on the playground, playground logic reigns: It takes one to know one. [...]

American Psycho: Business Card Scene (vid)
Douchebag: illustrated definition
_________________________________________________

BOOK
A MERGER has taken place between Peter Novobatzky and Ammon Shea's books Depraved English and Insulting English. The result? Depraved and Insulting English. "Some of the entries are lascivious," the authors say, "some revolting, and others derogatory. A few are all of these things." This book will provide blissful browsing for anyone who ever got a fourth-grade thrill from looking up naughty words in the dictionary or, later, felt a frisson of pleasure from using obscure but racy words that few others understood. Many of the terms here--such as coprolagnia, cypripareunia, hybristophiliac, peotillomian, and sacofricosis--sound downright illicit. More intriguing are the words that sound perfectly acceptable, like blissom, feist, and plooky. But watch out for the plooky fellow who lets out a feist when he blissoms; he's actually a pimply guy who farts silently while copulating with ewes. Eeew. -Amazon.com
__________________________________________________

NEW POST
Sylvie Guillem
__________________________________________________

R.I.P. John Hughes

Dear Mr. Vernon: We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it is we did wrong, but we think you're crazy for making us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us: in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, The Breakfast Club.

The Breakfast Club quotes


My first 12" vinyl was "The Ghost in You" by The Psychedelic Furs.

COMMENTS
I think part of the genius of that movie (Sixteen Candles) was that probably all the girls you knew in high school were like her character, even the popular, seemingly self-assured ones. If Hughes taught us anything, it's that high school sucks for everyone.

You know what makes me really sad? I mean, aside from all of the other reasons? It positively ends my hope that he'll do a director's commentary on The Breakfast Club.

I felt my whole nerdy weird childhood just flash before my eyes reading this. The Psychedelic Furs CD with Pretty in Pink on it, remains to this day, my most carefully considered purchase. It was the first cd I bought when I had saved up enough money for a cd player. John Hughes's soundtracks were as key to that generation as the movies they were in.

This also means some absolute, fucking jerk will try and remake one of his movies, to an epic fail. Because no one, just no one can capture the angst of the teen years like J.Hughes.

I'm officially wearing my Pretty in Pink t-shirt tomorrow. No really. I have one. And I'm wearing it.

Hughes created a self-contained but highly recognizable high school alternate universe where petty school bureaucrats ruled with an iron fist and soul-killing rules as cool kids, unpunished, roamed the halls like scavengers on the veldt.

Life sure does move pretty fast. I'm happy J.H. did get a chance to stop and look around.

Don't you, forget about him.

John Hughes was responsible for entertaining me when I was sick, stoked, depressed and/or anxious. I can quote at least 10 of his movies down to the ending credits and I want to thank him for convincing me I could look like myself and still get to bang Jake Ryan.
I guess TBS is aware of their programming duties this weekend. And not to be callous, but If Madonna croaks this Summer, the 80's are done.

As you walk on by....Will you call my name?

[gawker.com / jezebel.com]
*************************************************
Sincerely, John Hughes
John told me about why he left Hollywood just a few years earlier. He was terrified of the impact it was having on his sons; he was scared it was going to cause them to lose perspective on what was important and what happiness meant. And he told me a sad story about how, a big reason behind his decision to give it all up was that "they" (Hollywood) had "killed" his friend, John Candy, by greedily working him too hard.

+John Hughes' Stars: Then and Now - gallery

John the Rebel

Hit Man
[NOW Magazine - Jul.09-09]

John Leguizamo's Just For Laughs show is full of angry stories he can't tell in the U.S.

Most Hollywood actors keep quiet about the drama behind the scenes. Not John Leguizamo.

In his 2006 memoir, the fiery character actor best known for roles in Romeo + Juliet, To Wong Foo and Carlito's Way aired tons of Tinseltown's dirty laundry. Now his new solo show promises to take things a step further.

"Every day I'm making a hit list," he quips on the phone from New York City. "It's a laundry list of who's been messing with me and how to get back at them. This show is basically an expose. I take a very harsh look at who I am and how I got to where I'm at."

The play has already rattled some cages south of the border. Earlier this year, Leguizamo had to pull the plug on performances at NYC's Barrow Street Theater and the Actor's Playhouse after some of his barbs landed him in legal trouble.

"I had to cease and desist! I was told by this lawyer that I'm not allowed to say things like 'he's a sociopath' because I'm not a doctor, and apparently that counts as a diagnosis."

He adds that Canada lies outside the jurisdiction of the legal complaint, so what couldn't be said on stage in New York will be part of his show at Just For Laughs.

While he's starred in some bona fide Hollywood duds (The Pest, Super Mario Bros.), Leguizamo has real writing and acting chops and a clutch of stage awards to prove it.

His previous solo shows, Mambo Mouth, Spic-O-Rama and Freak, have earned him a solid reputation for playing all types of characters in rapid succession, as well as being brutally frank about himself and his past - no matter who gets offended in the process.

"Freak was about my father and me growing up as a kid. We never had a good relationship, but Freak put the nail in the coffin, so to speak, and now we're not talking."

He won't reveal who exactly gets dissed this time around (you'll have to buy a ticket to find out), but he claims that "a couple of actors are very angry with me for this, and one of them says he wants to punch me."

His memoir famously outed Leonardo DiCaprio as "a patron of prostitutes," so is it Leo who wants to tangle?

"No, Leonardo's not pissed off, actually," he says. "I saw him recently and he was totally cool. He didn't even mention it."

Balancing comedic and dramatic roles isn't easy, he admits.

"I can do it because I worked at it. I did my time in comedy clubs and doing performance art. I studied with the greatest acting teachers in New York City. I wasn't born a natural actor; I worked my ass off until I looked like a natural actor.

"This show is blatantly honest and unflattering. People are going to hear things about showbiz that they won't anywhere else. Nobody else is brave enough, nobody else has the balls to tell it like this, and I'm proud of that."
**************************************************
John Leguizamo Live! at the Berkeley Street Theatre (Jul.14-18).
**************************************************
Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends: My Life
In this brash autobiography, comic Leguizamo recalls a life lived "on the fine line between acting and acting out." Readers who know his celebrated one-man shows, Mambo Mouth and Spic-O-Rama among them, will recognize some of the same people and topics: the doting mom, authoritarian father, brother Serge and the author's perpetually adolescent fascination with sex. Familiar, too, are the chameleonlike shifts of tone and theme— Leguizamo's trickster charm and outspoken ethnic pride can morph to candid yet searing takes on money, fame and the acting life. Mostly, Leguizamo tracks his maturation and unlikely rise from a smart-ass acting tyro born in Colombia and raised in Queens, N.Y., to an award-winning actor, director and family man. As he puts it: "I'm a horrible example of how to have a successful career." Yet Leguizamo makes this story full of behavioral quirks and professional beefs memorable. Whether he is being tough on Latin stereotypes or describing his sexual conquests, the text is hilarious—propelled by jokes, quips and situations in which the author usually finds himself driven to reaction instead of reflection. This mix of the glib and the sometimes glam presents a refreshing cultural tonic.
--Publishers Weekly

Bio
Awards


PLAYLIST
Freak - part 9
Sexaholic - part 6
______________________________________________

NEW POSTS
Alice in Wonderland
Views on Tattoos

Play Whuff

Tara Hunt, author

Reviews
Embrace the chaos! The Whuffie Factor weaves stories from Moleskine, 37Signals, Threadless, Willitblend, and Gary Vaynerchuk into a compelling story of the way business is now done. Tara doesn’t just talk about it, of course, she does it herself.

Social capital may be the most powerful currency of the twenty-first century, and this book is a guide to its care and feeding. Bursting with energy and enthusiasm, Tara Hunt shows us how to win friends and influence people in a Web 2.0 world.

You might not be familiar with the term Whuffie before reading this book. I know I wasn't. It supposedly stands for "the store of social capital that is the currency in the digital world." Marketing today in the New Media is about building relationships. It's about give and take. It's not about "in your face" or just throwing money into advertising campaigns. By reading this book you should better understand what online marketing has migrated to be about and why it is important to go with the flow.

Whuffie is slang for social capital: your reputation, your credibility, your personal bankability. It's not as simple as the number of followers you have on Twitter, because that doesn't necessarily indicate your trustworthiness - there's plenty of spammers who've mastered the art of the followback. It's not as simple as the number of posts you've made on a forum somewhere, because that just indicates you're really good at clicking the Submit button.
Tara writes about marketing in new ways that I'd never considered. Marketing wasn't just a bunch of sexist guys designing magazine ads of barely-clothed women holding their product in provocative positions. Marketing meant understanding that places like forums, web sites and Twitter are, as The Whuffie Factor explains:
"...a simple but powerful online community where thousands of buying decisions are made every single day."
This message isn't just for companies: it's for employees. "Who cares," you ask, "if I'm not selling a product?" Even if you're not working a street corner, you're selling yourself. Future employers, future clients, and future coworkers are taking stock of your every action.
The Whuffie Factor demystifies the workings of social capital and marketing, and these explanations work great for IT geeks. Let's face it: we suck at networking, and we suck at marketing. We need all the help we can get. This book is the help, and we don't need a marketing background to understand how it applies to us.
The chapter "Become a Part of the Community You Serve" and the book's repeated message about turning the bullhorn around especially resonate with me, and it illustrates the problems with so many IT communities. Tara discusses how she worked with a web site to throw away their imaginary user profiles and connect directly with several real users instead using their own product. They became more and more intertwined with their own customers, and as a result, built better products. I've learned these lessons personally, and I found myself nodding over and over - and not because I was going to sleep.
Throughout the book, Tara gives simple, straightforward explanations of how to get whuffie, what happens if you do it right, and what happens if you do it wrong.

I'm using The Whuffie Factor right now to help a client understand the broader principles at stake beyond their current weak benchmarks in terms of external links, and other mentions of company resources online.
As a practitioner of search marketing (what is often misunderstood to be a narrowly technical field), increasingly I see the companies who increase their whuffie across the board to be very resilient in terms of the bottom-line-enhancing digital referrals they consistently get from search engines and similar sources.
It's all interconnected.
The value of this book isn't in proving that the author herself used social media tactics to promote her own business (those examples are self-reinforcing, in a way). It's that old-school companies who now hope that you can gaze at the keyword density of a few key pages on a website, and increase "rank" and "traffic," need the practical insights here that add up to a much broader audience building strategy: increase your Whuffie.
The Whuffie concept is well chosen and will help reinforce your sense of just how universally important it is to build your social currency, in any walk of life.

By traditional marketing standards, this book is everything I detest. It has an annoyingly cute and trendy title. It is about a subject I think I already know a lot about.
Too make things worse, the first paragraph inside the fly cover starts off "The book that catches the crest of Web 2.0 and shows how any business can harness its power ..." If I were browsing books at a bookstore, that would probably be enough for me to put the book right back on the shelf, assuming I would have taken it off the shelf in the first place.
However, Tara Hunt sent a message out on Twitter asking for people to review the book, and because Tara has incredible whuffie and knows how to use it, I agreed to review the book and I'm glad I did.

Before starting a coworking space, I interviewed Tara Hunt, and was suitably informed. I told her I wanted to keep up with what she's doing, and she said "Oh, just follow me on Twitter."
I'm not exactly an internoob, but from what I'd heard, Twitter was a gossip engine for adolescent shut-ins. But I joined, and followed, and initially thought my initial suspicion was justified. There was a lot of "OMG, I can't believe the way my hair looks today" and "saw the cutest shoes at Macy's" and "having lunch with @bff", etc. And then, "registering for this conference (link)".
Turned out to be a conference in my industry. One I'd never heard of. And in two days. I registered, went to the event, discovered there was a huge segment of people I'd never reached before. Because I'm not using the channels they pay attention to.
Since then, I've been learning all I can about the statusphere and its importance to growing a business in the 21st century. Tara Hunt's new book is an essential primer for anyone whose business is dependent on the good will of their customers, suppliers, partners, and team members. Which is to say: all of them.
I don't care if you're a one-man-brand or a 20 billion dollar corporation, if you don't master these fundamental community-sustaining competencies, you will fail.

Interview with Tara Hunt
Tara Hunt is a name that means a lot to Social Media experts but not only. Enterprise marketers are also - or should be - familiar with her earlier attempts at promoting a new form of marketing philosophy entitled Pinko Marketing, the aim of which was to prolong the work that had been initiated by the cluetrain manifesto team at the end of the 1990's. Beside her involvement in Barcamp and the coworking project, the San Francisco-based Canadian online marketer has got back to writing a new book The Whuffie Factor which is now available in the UK. I have asked Tara to present her new opus to our Orange readers in this exclusive interview:

Tara, I saw in Twitter and on your blog that you were preparing a new book entitled "the Whuffie factor". Why did you choose that name and what is the message behind it?
The name evolved for me and was suggested by the publisher. The working title of the book was 'How to Be a Social Capitalist: building your business with online communities' but the publisher thought that social capital was too vague and meant too many things. When he saw that I told the story of Cory Doctorow's Whuffie*, John Mahaney (editor) shopped the word around and found that people really responded to it. First they would laugh, then after the term was explained, they would remember it. The Whuffie Factor means, in basic terms, that people should pay attention to their actions in online communities.
(*Whuffie is a term taken from SF writer Cory DOctorow's book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.)

And what has it got to do with Social Media and marketing?
Well, the key point to understand about social media is that it is meant to be social. Facebook and Twitter and Flickr weren't built as platforms for sales pitches, they were built as platforms for human interaction: conversations, relationship building, trust, support, etc. The Whuffie Factor is about how well you do on that level. The 'marketing' part will just happen naturally in these communities because people are talking about their everyday lives, looking for guidance on their purchases and choices and looking to get that guidance from their trusted circle of friends. If you've built good relationships, you will do well. The book is about how you get to that point.

Before we delve into Social Media, can you please tell us why enterprises have to do marketing differently?
I don't think this is news at all, but people have been talking about this little thing called the Internet for a little while now. And what the Internet opened up was the ability for individuals to increase the size of their networks and expand their conversations. In doing that, the one-way communication of mass media started to lose it's power. There have been a few good studies lately that show that Word of Mouth recommendations between friends and 'people like me' are only getting stronger. Therefore, the marketing that uses pure bullhorn type techniques (ads, SEO, etc.) are missing out on a huge opportunity.

So Social media can help us get to grips with this new way of marketing products and services. Can you explain?
It's about taking the marketing out of it all together for the time being. I don't even like calling the fantastic interactions I have online 'social media'. Prior to online communities, I didn't call my relationships 'social face to faces'. The way you can come to grips is by taking off your marketers hat and putting on your customer hat. When you hang out with your friends, what do you talk about? I'm guessing you are open and honest with them. You share stuff with them. You ask them about their lives. You figure out what their needs are so you can help out as a friend. And...when the time is right...you can help one another out. There are just more sophisticated tools available so you can do this with more people. That's it.

As a consequence, Social Media isn't just a toy for geeks, it's serious stuff for serious business people. Does it mean that the role of managing communities is the job of the future?
I'm torn on that one. On the one hand, having the role puts priority on it. It says, "community is important to us, so we're paying an employee to make sure it is taken care of." On the other hand, by delegating that role to one person, a company loses many opportunities to build multiple relationships between customers and the company.

So should we start considering pricing our products in Whuffie rather than dollars or pounds?
Ha. in my opinion, no. I'd like to stay away from measuring it in the near future. Cory Doctorow, who came up with the term, warned us of the inherent problems of measuring whuffie in his book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. The biggest issue is that, once measured, it is totally gameable.

If you had only one piece of advice for our readers to get the Whuffie factor right, what would it be?
Imagine yourself at a party. How do you act if you want to meet people and make friends? Do you enter the party and just talk about yourself and leave once you get what you want? Or do you slowly enter the conversations, listening to people, joining in when you have something to contribute, asking people about themselves, exchanging jokes and being light-hearted? Probably the latter. That's also how you need to approach online communities if you want to raise your Whuffie.
______________________________________

NEW POSTS
Olafur Eliasson
Diddo Velema
Civilization
______________________________________

Indie Bookstores

David Mirvish Books to Close
[Globe and Mail - Jan.09]

One of Canada's oldest and most popular independent bookstores, Toronto's David Mirvish Books, is closing its doors at the end of February.

The store, specializing in books on visual arts, architecture, photography, design and film, was opened in 1974 on Markham St., near the famous Honest Ed's department store. The store, the brainchild of theatre impresario David Mirvish, son of Toronto businessman and philanthropist Honest Ed Mirvish, was first located in a building across the street from its current site. Its present home had been a gallery for contemporary art owned by David Mirvish and a few years after the gallery's closure, in 1975, he moved the store into its premises.

Eleanor Johnston, manager of the store for more than 25 years, said yesterday there was no one reason for the store's Feb. 28 closing. "David [Mirvish] just thought it was time, that the retail world has indeed changed a lot. Of course, it's always changing... There's always been something with the economy, the currency, the chains duking it out. It's not really a question of us not really being able to keep weathering those shifting sands, to mix metaphors. I think we just decided, 'It's just enough, it's time.'"

Johnston, who started as a clerk at the store 31 years ago, said Mirvish will move its out-of-print and rare books on-line and "make them available to the world." But the bricks-and-mortar operation is kaput. She said Mirvish has not yet decided what do with the high-ceilinged room, although the famous 50-foot-long Frank Stella abstraction, "Damascus Gate," will occupy its west wall for the time being.

"It's a problematic space in some respects," she laughed. "It's an event to change a light bulb."

The closing of Mirvish Books will be the second shuttering of a specialty book outlet in Mirvish Village in less than a year. Last fall Ballenford Books, specializing in architecture titles, closed for the final time. It started in 1979.

COMMENTS
[thestar.com]
The problem with online buying of art books is that you don't get to leaf through the book before you pay the huge price. The AGO bookshop is a shadow of what it was pre-'Transformation'. Buying art history books just got more difficult.

I will miss this book store. Christopher Morley writes of used bookstores as being something of a hub/nexus for the creative people of the world- in my long experience with Mirvish Books, it is one of the few new book stores that has a transcendent feel of the air full of ideas, sparks of inspiration, and a decent dose of bibliomania as per Morley's used bookstores. It is a special, physical place the online cannot, ever, touch.

Word on the street is that Mirvish had no issues with the bookstore, but preferred to turn it into a private gallery for his art collection, which won't even be open to the public. I guess when you own all the buidlings on the block, you can change a neighborhood's dynamic as you see fit. But it's a shame to see a landmark go and staff laid off on a whim. Makes one wonder how long Honest Ed's will last before he turns it into a condo.

What a shame. The architecture and scholastic community didn't come together to help Ballenford out. Now the combined arch/art/photography/design/film community in Toronto is going to let another landmark die. It's sad really, but what's worse are the university arch/art/fine art hist/photography/design/film professors who encourage their students to buy off Amazon rather then ordering en masse from these local retailers. Yes, Amazon has great selection, but local retailers can find you anything as well, AND THEY'RE PART of the COMMUNITY, which means they can do so much more. When's the last time Amazon held a lecture series? Shame.

I remember first coming here as a young designer in the late 1980's to get my art book fix. I've since gone there at least 5 times a year over the last 25 years. I will miss it and their very knowledgeable staff.

David Mirvish Books - Final Moments
*sigh*
*double sigh*
I don't live in Toronto, but when I'm up there, I love checking out some of your indie, smaller book stores.
Seeing the pictures, with the smiles, knowing it's ending, makes this even more sad.

I loved this place! I bought most of my UofT art/art history books here :(
I didn't even know they were closing! or else I would have gone down there!
RIP - I hope they do better online (but somehow I doubt that) because, "It's about coming here and reading and touching and feeling the books." so true

If you're still interested in drooling over and fondling art and design books ... there is always SWiPE, located in the 401 Richmond building.

Well, all I see are people complaining they can't go browse anymore. Maybe if more people actually bought the books, they'd stay open. It's a business, not a library.
Use it or lose it.

DM books didn't close because too many people were "fondling books". It wasn't because they were financially in the hole, or the rent was too high. The Mirvishes have deep pockets, and paid no rent as they own the building. David hasn't been involved with the book business for years, and it's no secret that he's re-focused the Mirvish biz on the theatre district.
I recommend everyone do themselves a favour and start fondling some books at SWIPE - their stock is phenomenal, they could use the extra business, and the owner is a really great guy.

David Mirvish Books




_______________________________________________

Swipe Books
[blogto.com - Feb. 09]

As I repeatedly circled around Richmond and Adelaide in search of the new location of Swipe Books, I began to wonder how a store so difficult to find could have any chance of survival. After about four loops in my car and the utterance of just a few expletives, I had the radical thought that maybe I should double-check my notes to confirm the address. Suffice to say, I might have kept circling all day had I not had that vague (and not altogether rare) feeling that, despite my annoyance, maybe it was me who was the idiot. After all, it's pretty hard to find a store located at 401 Richmond when searching desperately for 410 Richmond.

Once I had the correct address, it was a cinch to find Swipe. In fact, the building in which it is located is one that I've walked through a number of times in the past (before the store's arrival). A restored tin factory that houses a vibrant mix of studios, galleries and a few commercial spaces, 401 Richmond might just be the perfect location for a store that specializes in books on graphic design, architecture and the built environment. That is, if it weren't for that fact that the building offers no street-front space. Wrong address or not, I probably wouldn't have continually missed Swipe if it had a street presence, a point that's not lost on the store's owner, David Michaelides. One of his chief worries when he moved into the current space in May 2008 was that the location within a larger building might cast Swipe both out of sight and out of mind.

This, of course, begs the question: why did he move in the first place? Typically, his reasons had to do primarily with survival. As he frankly explained to me, "at the end of a lease cycle, pretty much all independent bookstores have to move." He should know; he's been in the book business coming on thirty years. And even when they're pretty successful, he continued, "they just can't afford to renew." For sad proof of this, consider the collective fates of Ballenford Books, Pages, and David Mirvish Books, all of which are closed or closing. One of the great difficulties, according to David, is that even when a bookseller has been astute in his choice of an up and coming area, he's still inevitably priced out of the market when the neighbourhood becomes established. In other words, you're damned if you do find a great location and damned if you don't.

So what to do? Well, despite the doom and gloom, the very fact that Swipe is still with us speaks to the viability - however precarious - of independent booksellers. But, to maintain their presence throughout the city, David muses that we might need to radically rethink how such bookstores operate and the nature of services that they provide. While they're clearly commercial enterprises, it might be more accurate to liken these stores to art galleries (most of which are also commercial, lest we forget). After all, where else is one so welcomed to loiter? And beyond this, having something of a patron figure can help to keep the doors open. Without getting into financial specifics, Margaret Zeidler, the owner/landlord of the building has been supportive of Swipe, believing not only in the concept of the store, but what it brings to a building occupied primarily by private galleries and studios.

I like this idea. When I go to bookstores, the experience is similar to the one I have at art galleries: a sort of meandering walkabout with plenty of time for contemplation. And hey, as expensive as some books are, they're cheaper than most pieces of art. Speaking of which, Swipe in particular seems a good example of this mix between gallery and store. Over the eight years it's been open, Swipe has gradually carried more and more non-book items in the form of exemplary pieces of design that range from the idiosyncratic and cheap (think egg-timer), to the sophisticated and pricey (think stainless steel juicer). There's also a well-stocked children's area, including books and toys. These items account for about half of the store's revenue, which might be high for a place that still characterizes itself as a bookstore first and foremost. But, that's just the nature of profit margins.

For all the promise that David sees in the new location, he still uses a rather apt screen analogy to summarize what it's like in the independent book business. Most will remember the famous opening scene from Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark in which Harrison Ford narrowly escapes being crushed by a massive stone boulder. David likens his position to this frantic attempt to escape a boulder that is already in motion. What I find worrisome about this analogy, however, is that though Jones does indeed escape the cave (and the boulder), when he tumbles into the outside world, he is greeted by his archaeological nemesis, Belloq, who relieves him of his prized artifact. Left with nothing to show for his ingenuity and heroism, Indy must once again thwart death as he runs to his escape plane. But, alas, it doesn't matter because he isn't in it for the profit, but for the adventure. For better or for worse, this may be the case for David, too. And when was the last time you saw a blockbuster about a bookseller? (And, no, You've Got Mail doesn't count!)

COMMENTS
[blogto.com]
David's an incredibly entertaining guy to talk to - I spoke to him on the day it was announced that DM Books was shuttering. If you want to get into a heated yet jovial conversation about the current state of the book industry, I recommend you go up and introduce yourself to him.
It should also be noted that there are plans to expand the current space - David mentioned that this would happen within the next few months. I think their new space is absolutely beautiful, and I can't wait to see how it evolves.

I've shopped at sw pe for years, from the DX to Richmond to the 401. I like the fact that i can go in look at stuff that inspire me as a designer. The fact I can pick things up and examine them as to just looking at a picture of it online makes a difference to me. I will always support sw pe, we need more business like this it's what makes living in Toronto so great. I hate to think of the alternative like what is happening just up the street on Queen St.



David Michaelides, owner of Swipe


The rumours are true, Swipe has opened a second shop in a beautiful, high-profile suite on the ground floor of 401 Richmond Street West. BUILT, Books on Architecture is hoped, in the fullness of time, to fill the void left by the (really, really depressing) closure last year of the venerable Ballenford Books. For more than 30 years a succession of Susans served the community with a commitment and a level of expertise that we cannot hope to match, at least in the short term. In fact, so as not to make matters worse for our colleagues, Swipe avoided architecture as a subject area altogether for as long Ballenford was in business, with the result that we now feel embarrassingly ill-prepared and uninformed. So … um … help!

E-mail us and let us know what you need, want, or would just like to see at the new shop. Or drop by and see what’s here and what’s missing. We’re open Monday to Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm and we’ve even got windows! Please help us to make this your community bookstore. [swipe.com]
____________________________________________

The Best Bookstores in Toronto
Operating a bookstore in Toronto may not be the most lucrative business these days. The dominance of mega-chain Chapters Indigo, online retailers like Amazon.ca and the rise of the Canadian dollar have resulted in a permanent shift in the industry dynamic. The good news is that the many popular book sellers who remain have made their stores better by distinguishing themselves on features like the quality of their selection, helpful service and ties to the local community.

With so many diverse independent bookstores in Toronto, it's difficult to narrow the offerings down to the ten best. Science fiction fans might lament the exclusion of Bakka-Phoenix. Children and their parents might not forgive us for overlooking Mables Fables. And playwrights might hunt us down on the account of our omission of TheatreBooks. And that's just the tip of the snubbed-list iceberg.

Ultimately our list of Toronto's best bookstores came down to the nominations and votes from our readers. Perhaps to nobody's surprise, perennial favourite Pages Books & Magazines secured the top spot. Among other qualifications, Pages has been a long-time supporter of local and independent publishers and hosts the widely-successful This is Not a Reading Series. Below we present our top ten bookstores in Toronto. To discover more Toronto bookstores click over to our bookstore section.

COMMENTS
[blogto.com]
Really enjoying all your Best Ofs, but you've missed the boat on this one. Most of this list reads like it was compiled 5 years ago. Ben McNally Books is a far superior bookstore, actively involved in the literary and publishing communities, and it has a far larger selection than most of the bookstores listed here, especially boutique Type and This Ain't the Rosedale Library, which seem more interested in promoting graphic novels than books without pictures.

Totally agree with you, James. Ben McNally is a one-man bookselling institution in Toronto, and has been for more than 15 years. Nicholas Hoare is another perennial favourite.

No way. Monkey's Paw. #1.
_____________________________________________

Ben McNally Books
[blogto.com - Jan.09]

I feel a confession is in order at the outset of this profile: these days I buy almost all my books online. It didn't used to be so. There was a time when I was addicted to bookstore hopping, when I loved the possibility of finding hidden gems tucked away in the used shops across the city, and when searching out books was as much about chatting with the clerks or owners as it was about actually buying anything.

I share this bit of guilty nostalgia because I get the feeling that there are others out there who have also slipped into such a habit, almost unknowingly, and sometimes it's good to remember why bookstores can be such stimulating places. But, of course, it's easy to romanticize things like this. Not all bookstores are created equal, the prices online are certainly cheaper, and those characteristics that I'm so fond of in great stores are becoming harder to find. It's for all these reasons that I was excited to drop by Ben McNally's Books and chat the owner up about his store's relatively recent opening and the state of independent booksellers in general. Maybe, I thought, a conversation with someone who's been in the business for forty years would inspire me to get back to my old book-buying ways.

Although the store that bears his name only opened in September 2007, many Toronto bibliophiles know Ben from his long time as the manager of Nicholas Hoare Books. In getting to know about his new venture, the first question that I was eager to ask was why he chose the Financial District as his location. When I think of independent booksellers, I tend to associate them with more residential areas, like BMV and Book City in the Annex, or Type and The Monkey's Paw in and around Dundas West.

But, as Ben explained, there is an obvious logic to why he chose Bay and Richmond to set up shop. Because he tends to stock a high percentage of first-run hardcovers, a well-to-do clientele is an obvious bonus (if not necessity). Not only that, based on the hourly traffic in the area, he can close the store at an early 6pm (and on Sundays), which allows for a variety of events to take place in 2500 square foot space after hours.

McNally's doesn't really specialize in any one genre, but if there's a focus on a particular type of book, it'd be on what Ben jokingly calls " the good ones," those nice looking hardcovers that people tend to want to keep around for the long haul, whether it be history, biography or fiction (genres in which he's well stocked).

As the bookseller for the Harbourfront Reading Series, he also has quite a number of signed editions from some of the authors who've participated over the years. In keeping with this desire to cater to those who collect books, the store itself is a warm, wood-paneled space that's reminiscent of an old library. Not overly cramped, it tends to invite patrons to browse through the various sections scattered throughout the room. It might even be fair to say that based on its size and decor, this is an independent bookstore that doesn't look like an independent bookstore.

I wonder, however, is that enough? Yes, the space is nice, and so too are the books. But, the other main question I had for Ben was how he would distinguish his store from the big chains and online retailers. His answer was surprisingly honest. If, he mused, the customer knows exactly what he or she is looking for, those other options do make a lot of sense.

But, on the other hand, for those who don't already have a title in mind, who'd like some hands-on guidance or recommendations, Ben's happy to help. It's the interactive experience that independent bookstores build their reputation on. While this may seem obvious, it's clear that Ben takes pride in helping people with their book selections, noting, for instance, how many regular customers he has and how often he consults with people participating in book clubs.

As I was leaving, we spoke briefly about the economic downturn and how it was impacting the book business. Although he said it was too early to tell in relation to his business, he did leave me with a statement that I think paints a good picture of his attitude in general. "Books should be a haven in hard times, because when you think about it, they're really an amazing value."

COMMENTS
[blogto.com]
Hurrah for Ben McNally, who exemplifies what independent bookselling is all about. And while it may be cheaper to buy online and to hit up chain stores for deep discounts, it is an entirely different and rewarding experience to walk into a store like his. It's the Church of Book Lovers. (As is Pages and Nicholas Hoare).

Ben is probably the best individual bookseller in the city, maybe the country.



Columbine by Dave Cullen
In the tradition of Helter Skelter and In Cold Blood, Columbine is destined to be a classic. A close-up portrait of hatred, a community rendered helpless, and police blunders and cover-ups, it is a compelling and utterly human portrait of two killers. [benmcnallybooks.com]


QUOTE
Don't rush the healing.

REVIEW
Not since Capote's In Cold Blood do we find such a thoughtful, illuminating, riveting, and disturbing portrait of the criminal mind. Columbine doesn't just explode the myths of what happened that day and why. Instead the book carefully dissects our biases, revealing a populace eager to blame this tragedy on poor parenting, Satan, rock music, or goth kids because it is simpler and more convenient than hearing the truth.

And the truth is that Eric Harris was a born psychopath and Dylan Klebold was clinically depressed, eager to please, and clawing for an escape hatch. Together they formed a rare and volatile combination known as a criminal dyad, a coupling of an egomaniacal control freak and a doting, depressed side-kick. Like Bonnie and Clyde and the D.C. snipers, the duo had a push-me pull-me effect that spun both kids out of control and down a dangerous path that now seems well-worn and obvious as we trace it back.

Cullen's coverage of the tragedy is remarkably broad and deep for a book that doesn't even run 400 pages. The entire scope of the Columbine shootings are covered with almost no wasted space. The book is agonizingly well-researched and brilliantly end-noted. Cullen was one of the Colorado journalists covering the event as it was happening, and has been following the aftermath for the past ten years. He has become one of the most informed minds to wrestle with the shooting, and one of the few to draw the right conclusions.

The layout and pacing in Columbine is also ingenious. Instead of pretending that this was a tidy moment in history that can be covered from beginning to end, Cullen pays homage to the frustrating way that details coalesced into a final picture. Jumping back and forth from Eric and Dylan's lives before the event to the tragic consequences that reverberated after, Cullen gradually paints a full portrait of the two men in much the way that they revealed themselves to investigators. There is no pretension here that this is a subject with an easy beginning, middle, and end. Any other method of relating this story would not do the popular confusion justice, nor would it result in such a vivid understanding of what these two boys were like, and what damage they wreaked on their community.

Another impressive touch is the complete lack of images presented in the book. The center clump of photographs, a mainstay of good non-fiction, is conspicuously absent. You will not find a single picture of the killers nor their victims. It took some time for me to appreciate this classy move by the author and publishers. There is no sensationalism here. This is an outstanding work of journalism that is not only the authoritative account of what happened at Columbine high school, it is also a glimpse of criminal psychosis that I believe will be held up as a classic in years to come. This isn't just a good book, it is an important book. It is not just about the past, and not just about this one event, it is about a sad fact of the human condition, and a call for forward-looking vigilance, not backwards-glaring vengeance. [...]

The Trench Coat Mafia and a massive conspiracy involving many other participants led many people astray, including investigators. The idea that these were unpopular geeks who were picked on by bullies led to a national campaign against something that played no role in the tragedy. Eric and Dylan more often played the role of bully than they did bullied. And implications that music, movies, goth lifestyle, Hitler, or videogames inspired their actions are as false as Michael Moore's assertions that they bowled on the day of the shooting.

Columbine replaces these falsehoods with an account of two kids that simply hated the world and its occupants. Everyone was beneath them. These were not kids cast out by society; they were misfits by choice. They fled the robots/zombies/sheep with eagerness and disdain. They celebrated the fact that they did not belong. Nobody pushed them away or ridiculed them, in fact they were just as popular in their own clique as any other kid, and just as invisible to most kids as we all were to people outside of our social circle. The kids who were not respected were Eric and Dylan's peers. The duo were able to look down on them from such a height of hubris as to be able to dehumanize them. Making them something outside of their scope of empathy. Easy enough to dispatch. [...]

Possibly the most shocking myth stripped down in the book is that this was a school shooting by design. The event became the poster for gun restrictions, which may be a noble cause, but it misses the intentions that Eric and Dylan had that day. By all accounts, the attack was a dismal failure. The massive bombs that they rigged up did not go off as planned. They had a low body count estimate in the hundreds, but hoped for thousands. They wanted to start a worldwide revolution. And they hoped they could do this all without devastating their parents. In every possible way, these boys failed. They failed their society, their peers, their parents, and thank goodness, they failed themselves.

These failures continue to cast ripples today. Cullen devotes a good chuck of his book to the horrible aftermath of these events. An investigation that became disgustingly political included cover-ups and foot-dragging. There were copycats, pranks and bomb-threats. Survivors went through physical and emotional re-hab. Some people tried to profit from the shooting. The school had to be rebuilt, along with the student body and the surrounding community. Some relationships were bonded for eternity, and some shattered. Depression and post-traumatic-stress were prevalent and devastating. Lawsuits were filed. The entire town seemed to be cursed, with normal bad luck ascribed to the ghost of Columbine. Cullen captures all of this with stunning detail and respectfulness. There is no stone that he does not peek under, describe, and then return with loving care. That he pulled this balancing act off for the entire book, detailing an event with so many scars and controversy, is absolutely stunning.

The end result is a book that should be required reading for every teacher, guidance counselor, clinical psychologist and parent. Columbine unmasks universal and innate tendencies that a small portion of our population harbors. And what makes this minority dangerous is that they have no empathy for the rest of us, and a genius for hiding this flaw. The signs of their disease are usually there, but they are murky due to our faith in nurture conquering nature.

Columbine is not just an account of an American tragedy, it is a guide for preventing future ones. We must begin by accepting that much of who we are is the dumb luck of genetics, but that this does not exculpate our actions. Sure, we can dream up more pleasant realities for us to operate within, where free will plays a larger role, and loving someone enough will make everything all right, but fantasy is never a solution for improving our existence. It is just the comforting blanket we tragically suffocate ourselves with.

What You Never Knew About Columbine
I know more about the Columbine story than most of Cullen's audience: I was Cullen's editor at Salon 10 years ago, on that awful day when the cable networks told us teenagers were dying in Littleton, and he told me over the phone he'd head there immediately. Little did either of us know then that he'd still be at Columbine a decade later.

So I can't be dispassionate about this book. I will point to raves from Time and Newsweek before offering my own personal observation: I knew Cullen was a dogged reporter and a terrific writer, but even I was blown away by the pacing and story-telling he mastered in "Columbine," a disturbing, inspiring work of art. [...]

What you won't learn, except in the footnotes, is that it was Cullen who broke most of the crucial Columbine myth-debunking stories and expanded on others. He was an army of one against the dozens sent by large national dailies, the news magazines, and local and national television networks. But he had key advantages: He lived there, he's charming and ingratiating, he's got an instinct for bullshit, and he's got a heart bigger than most hearts I know. He suffered through the Columbine story with the locals after the national stars went away; he also had the distance from local politics that a national outlet provided him. Still, what got him the story was his passion and smarts and sensitivity — he knew how to wrangle information out of traumatized teens and families and investigators because he was traumatized, too; I'll never forget some of our conversations when he talked through his own despair at what he was seeing.

As journalists debate the role of citizen storytellers and others who have a stake in the news we report, Cullen offers an interesting window — he was absolutely a trained professional who nonetheless never hid his devastation at the loss of the young lives at Columbine, or his place in the grieving community. He shows what someone with remarkable skills but even more remarkable compassion and judgment can do to break a good story. It was my honor to be his editor — and to discuss this book with him. [...]
______________________________________________

Monkey's Paw
[blogto.com - Sep.08]

Monkey's Paw is unlike any other bookstore in Toronto. There's no Harry Potter or Suzanne Somers Eight Steps to Wellness here. Instead, the shelves are a treasure trove of the rare and the bizarre with titles like Indian Police Today, Why China Has No Inflation, Artificial Impregnation, Cocaine Changes and Understanding Japanese Bantings.

Located in the old Carte Blanche digs on Dundas, just west of Ossington, Monkey's Paw was opened in March 2006 and named after a cheesy early-20th century horror story by W.W. Jacobs. The moral, or message, of the story is Careful what you wish for.

Owner Stephen Fowler figured that at a shop like Monkey's Paw, you'd never find the book you were looking for; but you might well find the book you didn't know you were looking for. Get it? So, don't go here looking for anything. Just go, browse the shelves and be amazed at what you'll find.

Even when the store is closed it's worth a visit. Fowler regularly rotates some of the most random titles in stock in the front window. Definitely makes for an interesting conversation piece after stumbling out of nearby Communist Daughter at 1am.

He also updates the store's blog on a weekly basis with some of the new and strange titles in stock. Customizing Your Van circa 1983 anyone?

For more details on the store, keep reading for my short Q&A with owner Stephen Fowler.

What distinguishes Monkey's Paw from some of Toronto's other bookstores?
We stock primarily odd, obscure, overlooked, and forgotten books. Other stores usually attempt to carry established classics; we look for books which are specifically NOT classics.
We select our stock according to an aesthetic formula: the beautiful, the arcane, the macabre, the absurd. We try to make sure that every book fits one of these descriptions...and the ideal Monkey's Paw title fits all four.
We also take into account the books' artifact value. In other words, we look at old books as not just texts, or collections of images, but as cultural artifacts in their own right: snapshots of their cultural moment, printed on paper, and gathered in bindings.
We try hard to offer good service...no bored, condescending staff. We'd like to convert the uninitiated, rather than exclude them.

Who is your typical customer?
We get lots of graphic designers, artists, journalists, grad students, and info-damaged postmodernists. Most are younger than the shop's proprietor.

What sort of events do you have at the store?
We've had a site-specific poetry contest (the "Detournement Tournament," where participants were challenged to compose texts using only the titles of books in the shop); a site-specific art show; and a few parties. We've also had a garage sale (thousands of books, nothing over $2) for the last two summers.

Anything else you'd like to a share?
A friend of mine who works in academic publishing said of my shop, This isn't a bookshop, this is a gift shop that sells books. This was probably meant as a slight dig, but frankly I'm comfortable with the characterization. Very likely the same statement could apply to any solvent bookshop in the 21st century; and I for one am honored to help discover a new role for old media in people's lives. Besides, who wouldn't be delighted to receive as a wedding present a 1940s clothbound edition of Van de Velde's Ideal Marriage, Its Physiology and Technique?

(1961) Master class in sensationalism: "Here are the swindlers and the swells, the babes who scheme and the pimps who outsmart them -- all conning their way in the greatest shell game on earth."

(1988) Considering a career change? This study is so richly detailed, it could serve as a practitioner's guide to the hustling life. [mo-paw.blogspot.com]
__________________________________________

NEW POSTS
Milla Jovovich
Milla
Not Above the Law