New York's Last Remaining Independent Bookshops (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via The Guardian, written by Hermione Hoby: Michael Seidenberg, pictured kingly in his throne of a wicker chair, feet spread, pipe in mouth, is one of around 50 New York indie booksellers featured in a series of portraits by Philippe Ungar and Franck Bohbot, a pair of bibliophilic Frenchmen who met and befriended each other in Brooklyn. The two, writer and photographer respectively, have taken great pleasure in traveling across the city, to neighborhoods in every borough, to meet and photograph booksellers in their habitats. Despite their diversity, the way their distinct personalities and passions are reflected and amplified in their shops, they are all, says Ungar, "looking for the same thing -- a generous vision of sharing culture". Ungar mentions Corey Farach, owner of the scruffy, adored and longstanding feminist bookshop Bluestockings. Farach, as Ungar recounts with admiration, encourages those people who can't afford to buy a $40 book to take a seat, make themselves comfortable, and just read it in the shop. "That is to me," says Ungar, "the spirit of the indie booksellers." Because, as he sees it, "a bookstore is much more than a bookstore, it's much more than selling books. It's a public shelter. Whoever you are, you don't have to buy anything, they won't ask you for your ID. You're free -- you can stay for hours and browse. There's a generosity, an optimism. And that's what we wanted to enhance." "[I]ndie bookshops are outposts of idealism," writes Hoby. "And if they seem like the most romantic places in the city, it might be down to this -- to the way their owners and customers might all be engaged in the same project, a kind of sanctuary building in the unsheltered world."

She goes on to mention Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, "a small space crammed with vintage titles," as well several closed bookshops "which have fallen to astronomically rising rents." "Three Lives & Company [...] narrowly escaped closure in 2016 after an upswell of neighborhood support," writes Hoby. The group that owns the building decided to "provide it with stability," given how well-loved it is in the West Village.

Comments

Re:Hypocrisy I've Came Across

[Anonymous Coward]

Previous AC here. My father was a professor at a school for librarians and my family has about 30,000 books - I myself have far less, maybe 1000. Many of my parent's books are hundreds of years old. So far for my own anecdotal background.

Now here is my take on it. Even cheap paperbacks last longer than digital media. Books on acid-free paper last hundreds of years or longer. Normal digital media last 5-30 years, depending on the type. (Tapes last longest, I guess, but who uses them?)

As for the ecological life cycle accounting, I'd say that overall the infrastructure to handle ebook readers and all the electronics associated with them including batteries and all the energy in producing all the infrastructure (servers, electronics, rare earths, global shipping, etc.) have a far worse ecological life cycle assessment than printed paper. The total costs for maintaining ebooks are also higher, you have to buy new devices every few years and the old ones pollute the environment a lot. To be fair, many people will have electronic devices suitable for reading electronic books anyway, though.

The point is moot, however, since technology can hardly be stopped. Printed books will not go away anytime soon, for the same reasons we don't have paper-free offices either. I work with large amounts of texts professionally every day and affordable readers are still far too uncomfortable and small. In the long run, looking at 100 years into the future or so, this will change, of course. Technology cannot be stopped.