Last Gay Bookstore in New York City Will Close March 29

[delalluvia]

I remember a store called "Bookwoman" in Austin.  I gathered that it was run by lesbians, but I didn't consider it a 'gay bookstore'.  Hmm.  Never thought about it much.

[Lynne]

Along the same lines, while lumbering back to the hotel from Meryl's tonight, we ran across this:

I am so saddened by this.  Murder Ink was a big name for mystery book-lovers.  Some of my favorite authors made a point of having book signings there - I'm thinking of Lawrence Block and Michael Connelly, but I'm sure the list is long and distinguished.

So I did a little research and found this article.  I guess it's old news, but still...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/books/20murd.html

Many Suspects Seen in the Death of a Mystery Bookstore

Case closed.

Murder Ink, the mystery bookstore on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is going out of business after 34 years, along with its younger sister store, Ivy’s Books and Curiosities. On Monday the owner, Jay Pearsall, posted a sign in the window announcing that Dec. 31 would be the final day.

“We’ve been having a hard time keeping up,” Mr. Pearsall said.

The list of suspects is long. The rent has been increasing by 5 percent a year and currently runs $18,000 a month, Mr. Pearsall said. A Barnes & Noble at 82nd Street and Broadway has been chipping away at business for years. Amazon and eBay killed off mail-order business and sales of rare books.

And at some point in the mid-1990s, Mr. Pearsall said, he realized something even more troubling.

“I used to do apartment buys,” he said. “Children of people in the neighborhood who had died would sell their parents’ books; lots of them immigrants, lots of them Jewish, educated, liberal, and they just had all these great books. I realized that our clientele was dying.”

For the last few years, he said, the store has depended on sales from nonbook items that yield larger profit margins, like greeting cards, journals and action figures of Carl Jung and Rosie the Riveter.

The original Murder Ink opened in 1972 on West 87th Street as perhaps the first bookstore devoted to crime and detective fiction. Its founder, Dilys Winn, sold the store after three years to Carol Brener, who owned it for 14 years. In 1989 Mr. Pearsall bought it, and three years later moved to 92nd Street and Broadway.

There are currently about 2,500 independent bookstores in the United States, not counting stores that deal only in used books, said Meg Smith, a spokeswoman for the American Booksellers Association. In 1993 the number stood at about 4,700.

Dyana Kimball, a 31-year-old theater director, noticed the sign at Murder Ink on her way to the subway Tuesday morning. “I’m so sad,” she said. “I feel like they curate books more than just sell all of the best sellers.”

As the New Year’s Eve closing approaches, Mr. Pearsall said his thoughts had turned to his 10-year-old son, Riley, who practically grew up in the store, and to Gus, the 11-year-old wire-haired pointing griffon who spends his days there.

Then there are the books.

“When I see ones that I can’t order again, it’s hard,” Mr. Pearsall said. “Whether it’s ‘Finnegans Wake’ or ‘Pat the Bunny,’ it seems impossible that we won’t order or sell those again.”

And I think it's another bad sign that 2+ years later that storefront is still empty.

 

[delalluvia]

Along the same lines, while lumbering back to the hotel from Meryl's tonight, we ran across this:

I am so saddened by this.  Murder Ink was a big name for mystery book-lovers.  Some of my favorite authors made a point of having book signings there - I'm thinking of Lawrence Block and Michael Connelly, but I'm sure the list is long and distinguished.

So I did a little research and found this article.  I guess it's old news, but still...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/books/20murd.html

Many Suspects Seen in the Death of a Mystery Bookstore

Case closed.

Murder Ink, the mystery bookstore on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is going out of business after 34 years, along with its younger sister store, Ivy’s Books and Curiosities. On Monday the owner, Jay Pearsall, posted a sign in the window announcing that Dec. 31 would be the final day.

“We’ve been having a hard time keeping up,” Mr. Pearsall said.

The list of suspects is long. The rent has been increasing by 5 percent a year and currently runs $18,000 a month, Mr. Pearsall said. A Barnes & Noble at 82nd Street and Broadway has been chipping away at business for years. Amazon and eBay killed off mail-order business and sales of rare books.

And at some point in the mid-1990s, Mr. Pearsall said, he realized something even more troubling.

“I used to do apartment buys,” he said. “Children of people in the neighborhood who had died would sell their parents’ books; lots of them immigrants, lots of them Jewish, educated, liberal, and they just had all these great books. I realized that our clientele was dying.”

For the last few years, he said, the store has depended on sales from nonbook items that yield larger profit margins, like greeting cards, journals and action figures of Carl Jung and Rosie the Riveter.

The original Murder Ink opened in 1972 on West 87th Street as perhaps the first bookstore devoted to crime and detective fiction. Its founder, Dilys Winn, sold the store after three years to Carol Brener, who owned it for 14 years. In 1989 Mr. Pearsall bought it, and three years later moved to 92nd Street and Broadway.

There are currently about 2,500 independent bookstores in the United States, not counting stores that deal only in used books, said Meg Smith, a spokeswoman for the American Booksellers Association. In 1993 the number stood at about 4,700.

Dyana Kimball, a 31-year-old theater director, noticed the sign at Murder Ink on her way to the subway Tuesday morning. “I’m so sad,” she said. “I feel like they curate books more than just sell all of the best sellers.”

As the New Year’s Eve closing approaches, Mr. Pearsall said his thoughts had turned to his 10-year-old son, Riley, who practically grew up in the store, and to Gus, the 11-year-old wire-haired pointing griffon who spends his days there.

Then there are the books.

“When I see ones that I can’t order again, it’s hard,” Mr. Pearsall said. “Whether it’s ‘Finnegans Wake’ or ‘Pat the Bunny,’ it seems impossible that we won’t order or sell those again.”

And I think it's another bad sign that 2+ years later that storefront is still empty.

 

Guess those owners who kept upping the rent shot themselves in the foot.  Instead of trying to negotiate to keep a long-time tenant, they decided to keep pace with already inflated rental prices and lost them.  Now, years later, they don't have anyone paying any amount of rent there.

[Lynne]

Here's a review of a book I really enjoyed by Lawrence Block - Small Town:

A review by Christopher Bolton

http://www.powells.com/review/2004_01_24.html

One doesn't ordinarily expect some of the most exciting moments of a crime novel to consist of a major character receiving constant, breathless updates from the literary agent who's selling his new novel to the highest-bidding publisher. But Lawrence Block's Small Town isn't strictly a crime novel — it's as much a character piece and a portrait of a community as Richard Russo's Empire Falls, albeit with a higher body count. Only the most stringent genre-phobe would insist on stranding Small Town in the "ghetto" of crime fiction.

Small Town is an ensemble story about New York City in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001. The characters are in the process of reassembling their lives, unable to shake off the changes wrought by that tragic day — and, in at least one instance, a shattered life is left in shards. Block's cast includes John Blair Creighton, a mid-list novelist who becomes the suspect in a murder and consequently sees his career skyrocket even as his freedom is less than assured; Frances Buckram, the former police commissioner of New York and an early favorite to run in the next mayoral election, if he can shake off his obsession with a serial killer called the Carpenter; and Susan Pomerance, the owner of an art gallery whose sexual awakening brings her into direct contact (in many, varied ways) with both men. There are other characters, among them a colorful defense attorney, an ex-addict who finds himself stumbling across one too many crime scenes, and a man who lost everything in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and has consequently fallen into a homicidal mission to "save" his beloved city. To Block's credit, each one emerges as a distinct and memorable individual, even if a couple of them wind up dropping off by the end (most notably the ex-addict, who disappears entirely about halfway through).

Block's strong rendering of his large cast doesn't quite have Russo's unerring skill at drawing a fully fleshed character in only a couple of paragraphs; however, his characters grow on the reader and are a pleasure to revisit. For a crime novel, Small Town is relatively uneventful; sure, there's a serial killer loose, and the bodies pile up, but Block's interest is primarily in the psychology of his cast. Some of the book's most riveting moments involve the unexpected revival of Creighton's faltering writing career. The auction of his novel contains the suspense of Block's finer crime writing, coupled with an exhilaration that can only be conveyed by an insider who's been there (or been close to other writers who have).

The murders in Small Town are graphic and intense, as such scenes ought to be. Far more repulsive is the notion that an act of unspeakable violation should be rendered quaintly — as in an Agatha Christie mystery, where the taking of life is a merely inconvenient affair to be tidied up before high tea. More to the point, the repercussions of these murders resonate throughout our cast, keeping the gruesome killings from feeling sensational or thrilling. Murder is an ugly business, especially as it's conducted in this novel, and one of Block's truly devious twists is to make his killer sympathetic even in the glare of his heinous crimes. Small Town ably demonstrates how violence begets violence, and one unspeakable act merely leads to another.

The sex is particularly noteworthy. Lawrence Block's reputation as a modern Grand Master of crime fiction is due primarily to several distinguished series, notably the Matthew Scudder mysteries and Bernie Rhodenbarr capers. But Block himself has admitted that he once paid the bills by writing pseudonymous erotic novels — much of which, he's said, would barely qualify as soft-core porn by today's standards. Be forewarned: the sex scenes in Small Town streak past NC-17 and plunge gleefully into the well of hardcore. I could only laugh to myself to read the customer reviews on a certain online bookseller's web site, in which various naysayers complained about the horrible dirty sex but seemed to have no problem with the crushing of human skulls by a claw hammer. I'll be up front: I liked the sex. I liked that it was explicit. Readers who complain that sex scenes are there only for titillation may as well gripe that jokes are only there to make you laugh. Is there an emotion besides lust that requires additional justification to tap into? Well, as it happens, the "deviant" sex explains an awful lot about the characters who engage in said practices — so there's justification, if any were required.

Small Town succeeds most admirably in my basic test of any writing. When I pick it up, am I drawn into it? And when I put it down, am I looking forward to my next opportunity to get into it again? More than a few relatively enjoyable books have gone unfinished because I put them down and never felt a compelling reason to pick them up again. Block gives us many compelling reasons to pick him up — from his characters to his vivid setting (New York City comes alive in his hands), to the irresistible thrust of his plot — and, very few reasons to put him down.

[Clyde-B]

There's Unabridged Books in Chicago.  It is primarily gay and lesbian with mainstream books as well.  When I was growing up not understanding what my options were, I would have given anything for a place like this where I could find out.

We lost our Sci-Fi bookstore The Stars Our Destination a few years back.  That was a big loss because Alice stocked virtually almost everything you could imagine, new or used.

[Jeff Wrangler]

We used to have a bookstore here in Philadelphia that specialized in mysteries. It's long gone. 

And there was once a shop in Provincetown that specialized in mysteries. It was called "Cape and Dagger." The store logo was an image of Cape Cod as an arm, with a "hand" at the end of the cape--where Provincetown is--clutching a dagger.