It was not surprising I suppose to hear that this funky old Key West business is closing, leaving Island Books as the only bookstore in town. I love the Internet but I love books too. I wrote this essay in Spring 2010 and I present here as part of my ten day retrospective before Chuck and I fire up http://thekeywestlocal.com/ on January 1st. This essay illustrates exactly why I enjoy going around town photographing things, because things change. Farewell you funky piece of older Key West:
If you need good old fashioned hard copy pornography you might consider coming by this place on Truman Avenue.
It's a weird shaped book store as befits Key West's peculiar architecture. There is a long alleyway and little booths off to the side, each booth labeled with general subject matter contained therein.
I am a boring old fart because I spend time in the classics section and perusing sailing books. Horror you can keep along with the bodice rippers as well. Blame the dog for the crappy quality of the next picture. Perhaps I should have checked out the pet section.Silly me, I did!
I came in to buy a copy of To Have And To Have Not by some dude who used to live in town, I'm told. The clerk said they were sold out. Bummer. It seems the book is a community reading project and everyone in town is supposed to read it for discussion later. What a coincidence.
Strain your eyeballs riepe, those are the titty magazines in the background. You can give me a tour when you visit.
If you want the real thing you set across the street and pay a wage slave from Lithuania to tell you you are hung like a donkey and you make her every bleached root twangle. Someone with my acute sense of the ridiculous finds these places absurd. Like I said, I'm a bourgeois nerd.
I got out of Bargain Books for the loss of $7 plus tax (the nerve to tax me!). Kidnapped is a classic of course, and I haven't read it in ages. Cry Viva is a story of a gringo lost in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, a book I've never heard of. If I'm lucky it will be Graham Greeneland, if I'm unlucky it will be a waste of $4 plus tax (the nerve!). My wife found me a copy of the Hemingway book at the College library. Weirdly enough I am enjoying it, the first of his books I remember liking.