Westsider Books

In 2007, I started working in the evenings and eventually weekends at Westsider Books. Located on Broadway between W 80th and 81st, it was only a few blocks from my full-time job at the American Museum of Natural History. The used book store, crammed narrowly into three stories, was out of Neil Gaiman’s mind or any other fantastical author you would find in a store just like this one. We all hold an idea of what old books smell like in our heads; for me that smell is this store.

Dorian and Bryan, who also own Westsider Records (W 72nd), took care of their employees and patrons. Gave them not just a job but a place to go. I saw so many different people walk in and out, hang out in the entry way, drink wine with the owners. They sell good books. Eclectic books. Books you didn’t know you wanted. Books you didn’t know existed. And when they get them, popular books (everybody’s gotta make a dime).

I worked mostly with Dorian and Patrick, a manager. Living in America for 15 years had softened Dorian’s British accent to just the words we roll around in our mouths before we say them. Patrick and I smoked pot in the employee’s only basement where we shelved and talked about books, music, movies, and our respective love lives. I had at least one shift a week with Linda, who’s back pain made her as weak as she was grumpy. She had a very, VERY particular opinion on absolutely everything which she told me about as I shelved and she sat at the front register. The shop was small. I could hear her from every corner.

I’m not saying her opinions were wrong, or right. She was just very particular about them.

I remember her being one of the best book binding reparists in the region for some reason, but I am not sure where that memory comes from and how much truth is in it. She was hailed as the best in the shop of which she was rightly proud, even though it aggravated her back pain from leaning over the text and cramped her fingers.

There was a man that worked in the record shop, Phil or Doug or Rich, that was there until the day he died. I worked with him twice, sent to help sort a large collection that had been purchased from someone who had just lost a relative and didn’t know what to do with all their belongs. Or from someone that was forced to downsize and could only keep a few select records. Or from someone forced to leave the city because the Rent Is Too Damn High and wanted to start fresh. It didn’t matter to us. We were often offered large collections to sort through for various sad and life-goes-on reasons. We didn’t always accept them simply because we couldn’t house books we knew wouldn’t sell. Collections we did accept had some real gems but most of it was for the dollar bins outside.

I didn’t know enough about music to appreciate the records the old man would hand me. He’d give me piles to sort and shelve, or bring down stairs. Both stores held vigils the weeks after he passed on. That man had worked in that record shop through multiple owners. Through the hard times in NYC. When the upper west side wasn’t just a refuge for new money but a blossoming scene riddled with petty and illicit crime. As it evolved from a wilderness to a bohemian happening to a Nice Place To Raise Your Kids (™), Stan or Frank or Gil, was an institution himself tucked into that record store. He never said much to me, but he always had a smile.

When I applied for the job I made my intentions clear: I was saving for grad school and my primary salary was going towards that fund. What I wanted was a little extra pocket money to go out on the weekends guilt free. I had worked in a library in middle school and was an avid reader, and this store fit some memory I had planned for my future self. I listed three books that I was reading at the time on my resume: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins; The Black Veil by Rick Moody; and The Bible. The owners asked me why I was reading the Bible.

“Well, I figure I should know what’s in it considering so many people base their life on it.”

That answer seemed to suit them just fine.

I never did finish reading the Bible. I never got past Leviticus.

Dorian taught me their system, which I have come to learn is common in used book stores across the country. That has always brought me a small amount of joy and florid pride: to walk into a used book store and have an clearer understanding of the system behind layout, the shelf organization, the pricing, than a common customer. Not that it is difficult to figure out, but you see, I was taught it.

The store was designed for people to be aware of their surrounds. You walk into a room so densely packed, most stand in the entry way for a few trying to decide where to start. If Linda was at the front she would sternly remind people that they could not block the entrance that they needed to either enter or leave. If Bryan was manning the desk he would be chatting with two people in the entry way, sitting on folding chairs kept near by for that purpose. Folks would smile pleasantly and carefully take two steps in, two steps to the right, or two steps up the stairs, and start browsing.

Two steps in took you down the left hallway of the store, which housed fiction, travel, self help, foreign languages, and some autobiographies. Some of the shelves, especially in fiction, were double stacked. Meaning that if you pulled a book off the shelf, there was another row of books behind it. And on top of it. The fiction section is where most people spent their time, as the books were organized by the first letter of the authors last name, but not by much more than that. And if you were on the hunt for something in particular, it was good practice to check the letter above and below the last name in question. Someone like me may not have gotten around to combing through the shelves, putting things in roughly the right place again.

Two steps to the right took you to the right hallway, and through art history, other autobiographies, history, political scienc, music, and the small record collection we kept in shop. History and the poli sci, like the literature books, were double stacked. Most of the art and music books were too large or oddly shaped to stack more than one way. The two hallways met in the back where plays, comic books, and science fiction/fantasy lived, the most disorganized section of them all. I spent more time pulling every single Clarke and Asimov and Anthony book out and putting them back in the correct order than I did any other section. I also purchased the most from this section, which may have had a hand in how much time I spent there.

Along the stairs were pulp fiction novels and VCR tapes (I had a VCR at the time, yes in 2007, so I loved it). Up the stairs were the signed and art collection books where real collectors browsed. Behind a few cases of glass were books rare enough to be on display (most of the valuable books were not on display) including a copy of the Iliad wrapped in pig hid. It was worth a small fortune. There was also a book restoration station upstairs and a desk. Bryan or Patrick would occasionally be sat going over something at the desk, but if you wanted to put money down you’d put it on Dorian.

For the first half of the store the shelves went all the way to the top of the second floor, accessible only by ladders built into tracks along the wall. These shelves were loosely organized overflow, mostly non-fiction. In the beginning I loved having an excuse to move the later to the correct spot, hearing it roll along in the track, then climbing the darkly stained wooden ladder to shelve books. It felt so authentic.

It me.

This euphoria went on longer than necessary but, as I had been warned, I grew tired of them. It was dangerous to climb up and down with more than a handful of books at a time. Or if Linda was around, more than three books at a time. Many of the books going up rarely were being shelved together. So up and down and up and down and no matter the time of the year, it was always hot.

Though now I get to #humblebrag about working in a store with ladders designed to reach nothing but books, and that I’m jaded about it.

I remember leaving a secret in one of the books, but I don’t remember what it said, or the book. I think in one book, possibly two, I confessed something very personal to the early twenties version of myself and left it in a book for someone to find. Post Secret was very vogue, you know? It’s hard to guess what the secret would have been about, I was invested in so much those days. I was invested into the glamorous career I was going to have as a scientist, and how that was going to let me see the world. I loved my day job at the American Museum of Natural History, but I knew it was temporary. I already had plans for my future. I could have left a secret about how the soles of my shoes echoed in the empty, musty halls before the museum opened. Or about how I had broken a dinosaur bone. Or about the embellishments, not untruths mind you, I had made to help get into graduate school.

But let’s be real. I probably wrote something lame about a boy.

The fact that I can’t remember what I wrote highlights how much we re-prioritize our goals as we age. We don’t dismiss them, we rearrange.

Even after I had left New York, I used my folks home on Long Island as a home base while I traveled the world. I would visit the city whenever I could. For the first few years whenever I popped into the store, Dorian would still give me the employee discount. Sometimes, he’d even offer me a glass of wine. Wine or not we would sit and chat, catch up for awhile. I’d rejuvenate my memories of that little store. A mask hung on the wall that I had forgotten about. A postcard taped next to the New York History section, right by the door. A deep cut in the well-worn wood of the stairs, stacked with books going up the side that had been there long before I showed up.

Up until the early 2010s I came back to NYC regularly, and always tried to stop in to Westsider Books to look for the book that had been recommended from a different fraction of my life. But I didn’t always make it back in, and soon years stretched in between my visits. Dorian’s recognition of me became strained. My employee discount (which had never asked to be continued) was rescinded. The last time I came in Dorian looked like he couldn’t quite place me, but said hello in case we did know each other. I don’t blame him. I’ve grown up and moved on in my life. I probably look very different to whatever he may remember about me at 23 and 24. We change a lot in the following years. He, however, remains painted in this memory I had planned for myself.

In January of 2019 on Twitter and Facebook, Westsider Books announced it was going under. That it was aiming to close its doors by the end of February. It was sad, and I did what little I could. I shared their announcement on social media, encouraging folks to buy from their online collection or if in NY, to stop in and help them clear their shelves. Articles in local NY newspapers started to crop up all painting romantic images Westsider Books as a gem of the west side. The kind of place where you stumble upon it, and feel good it exists. We take a deep breath to take it all in, and we buy a thing or two to congratulate ourselves on finding such a treasure.

I don’t know about you, but most of my books don’t come from used book stores. For the most part, I use the library (another industry in danger of collapse) or borrow from friends. If I am going to buy, I do try to buy from the independent or used book stores in my current city. They need support, too. I still love a stumbled-upon book nookery when traveling to different cities, but you don’t always know what you need when you walk in the door. In the end, I still have a Kindle. I travel a lot, and have deadlines. Some books are better on audio. In the world that we live in, there isn’t always time to make the ‘right’ purchase. Dorian wasn’t blind to this trend. He saw how ebooks were starting to dominate the market. In a 2013 interview with the NY Press he is quoted, "You can't fight the future," he said. "What am I supposed to do—bomb the Kindle factory?"

The West Side Rag wrote about the closing, musing that Dorian suggested a crowd fundraiser could save the store.

This is what Dorian said:

“I can’t do it anymore, can’t make the rent. Business is down. It was a very quiet year, a very slow year,” he said on Tuesday, a day after announcing on his website that the store was closing.

“Is there anything that could keep you here?” we [West Side Rag] asked.

“I guess if somebody did a crowd funder and raised $50,000. I’d do it. Don’t see that happening though.”

That doesn’t sound like an enthusiastic endorsement, but you know, headlines.

Of course, if you don’t already know the end of this story, somebody did. Bobby did. Go Bobby! Within a day of the GoFundMe page going live, folks had donated over $27,000. They hit their goal in 4 flippin’ days.

So the store is saved for another day. Who knows if or when something like this will happen again. I hope it doesn’t. And if it does, I hope the successful folks raising their kids on the upper west side (because it is a nice place) will bail Westsider out again.

When I started this post, in January, it was intended to be a love letter to a lost friend. Honesty, I didn’t expect the store to be saved. Dorian was aware of the uphill battle he was facing when I was an employee, and so many artistic details of American life are forgotten in the modern climate. We have a lot that we need to care about these days to make sure we come out on the other side of this dark period better, not worse. Quaint used bookstores, even if they are well curated as Westsider is, can’t be high on the priority list. As a culture, we’ve rearranged our goals to meet the times.

But Westsider is rearranging, too. Due to the media attention they’ve recieved they finally have someone managing their social media presence. And she is killing it. Some of the posts do seem a little young for the type of audience Westsider may appeal to, but she’s consistent and takes artistically framed shots that show the depth and variety of books Westsider offers. This is such a stark difference to the videos Dorian and Patrick posted on Facebook which, you may have noticed, are sprinkled throughout this post. Not all of these videos have aged well, but they give you an insight to the culture of the store. In one, there is a phone ringing in the background and Dorian, barely thinking, picks up and then hangs up on the caller to continue the video. I love these videos because they were made in the early 2010s but somehow look like they were recorded in 1995.

Nothing but <3, Dorian.

As jest-worthy as my younger self’s plan was, I love that Westsider Books is part of my story. It is deeply entrenched in my memories of the upper west side. What is clear is that I am not alone. Hundereds of people donated thousands of dollars to keep alive an antiquated for-profit business that they hold valuable memories of. Can you think of any other industry folks would rally behind so enthusiastically?

So raise a glass of wine, Westsider. To the many more glasses to come.