SOLTuesday: Reminiscence

            Yesterday I needed a book for my book group, and it was available at a bookstore on

Columbus Avenue. I had a podiatrist appointment about a mile away, so I decided to walk. After I got my book, I walked around the corner to 82nd Street, where Jack and I lived our first three years in New York. Our second apartment was at 134 West 82nd, a (very cheaply) renovated building—there were large gaps between the baseboards and the floor in places. We had mice. I got a cat from a “cat lady” (she had many in an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen), who turned out to be sick and we returned him. (Our cat-loving friends now would probably berate us for not taking him to the vet to cure him, but we were both working, and young, and careless.) An apartment in this building recently sold for three-quarters of a million dollars.

            The bookstore is in a building, the Endicott, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endicott_Hotelthat has now returned to its original status, then at the turn of the 20th century a luxury “hotel,” now a luxury co-op, but when we lived at 134, it was an SRO (single room occupancy), aka

welfare hotel. At night we sometimes heard screaming. The original Endicott had a glass-roofed Palm Court, and in that same space a series of restaurants in modern times; when we lived there, the space often held local CORE meetings. In photo to the right, the gray building in the background is now a police precinct, but when we lived there, it was a city-owned vacant lot; when it snowed, the city never cleared the sidewalk, and after several months of snow and melting snow, the pavement was broken in many places.

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Slice of Life, #16

            I visited to a new bookstore today, Book Culture on Columbus. It's the third branch of Book Culture (which is in the Columbia University neighborhood, used to be Labyrinth Books until one owner bought out the others, who took over the New Haven store still named Labyrinth). The New York owner called his “new” old store Book Culture. (The second branch was also in former bookstore space, what used to be Papyrus Books, which closed years ago, then became Morningside Books, until Book Culture took over the lease in 2009.)

            The newest store also used to be a bookstore, but before that it was on the ground floor of the Endicott Hotel. Originally built in 1889, the Endicott had been a majestic building with a palm court and such residents as the gangster Dutch Schultz. By the 1960s, however, it had become an SRO, housing people on the lowest  economic rungs. I lived around the corner from it then, and on Saturday nights we would sometimes hear screams or drunken shouts. On weekdays mornings as I headed to work, I'd pass half a dozen men sitting on the Endicott stoop, already drinking, but they recognized me from the block and greeted me good-naturedly. A police precinct was built next door, and the Endicott was converted to a luxury co-op in 1981, with a large bookstore also called the Endicott. It was a lovely bookstore, with a large selection of fiction ranging from literary to commercial, and thoughtful nonfiction as well. Then it closed, in 1995.*

            I was happy to hear that Book Culture was opening there, and today I had a chance to go in. It's the same expansive, airy space, with lots and lots of books,  and also lots of imaginative sidelines (bookseller jargon for anything that isn't a book): besides the usual Moleskin notebooks and note cards, there are, in the cookbook section, colorful ceramic teapots, plates, and bowls, as well as tote bags and an odd collection of colored spoons – or maybe that was just a table decoration. Even though I have more books than I have time to read, I bought the second volume of John Lewis's graphic memoir, March 2, and a recycled Decomposition notebook.
*[Blogger is making me look like a complete layout dunce, arbitrarily changing fonts and sizes and not allowing me to correct such design mistakes. Any Blogger users out there who can help?]