Anyone who knows me knows that I have a bit of an incurable passion for anything ‘New York’ (and that’s despite having never visited the city, and living 3288 miles away in Scotland 
)). One of the ways I feed my passion for the Big Apple is to subscribe to a number of New Yorkian blog feeds, and I was skimming one of my favourties ealier today – Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, when I stumbled across a story that most definitely warmed the cockles of my bookish heart.
Apparently a street vendor had turned up several weekends on the trot to set up his stock of second-hand books, almost directly in front of the indy bookstore ‘Community Bookstore’ which resides on Park Slope, Brooklyn (trying to take advantage of the increase in ‘specialised’ passing trade of course). After contacting the authorities who proved less than helpful, nice but miffed Community Bookstore owner Catherine Bohne, shouted out to her 1700 mailing-list subscribers asking for their advice on what she should do about the ‘situation’.
Many of the recipients of Catherine’s ‘shout out’ were angry and a few even decided to take up the cause themselves, by coming along to the store and voicing their disapproval at the street seller for what he was doing, and requesting that he move off to somewhere else. The result? By the end of the weekend it appeared that the 2nd-hand book seller had had enough of being harangued by the bookstore customers and after that weekend he hasn’t been seen since.
Now let me make something clear. I don’t advocate bullying in any shape or form, and in all honesty this all looks a bit like that. However, illegal is illegal and what this guy was doing was, in my opinion, plain wrong, and he somehow had to be discouraged. There are a million places this guy could have ‘set up shop’ but he decided to take the profiteer’s route and try to make money off the back of someone else, someone by their own disclosure, who has to pay $90,000 per year before they can even begin thinking about making their own living.
Putting the slight ugliness aside though, what really warms my heart about this story is that the community showed that they cared about their local bookstore, and in this time of recession when we see bookshops closing down left, right and centre, it’s heartening to find that there are people out there who are prepared to fight for small bookstore survival. What’s more, with a website that’s as aesthetically pleasing as the Community Bookstore’s, this is one book shop I want to see around for a long time. Damn it! Yet another place to put of my ‘to visit when I’m in New York’ list.
Anyway that’s what I think, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on this whole affair? Was Catherine right to be niggled about this street seller? At the end of the day was he really harming her trade? And what about the bookstore community in taking matters into their own hands? Do you consider them knights in shining armour or nothing more than playground bullies? Drop a comment. I’d love to hear from you!
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