Yes, we don't have no Bookstores!

Ah, the power of the double negative!

One day earlier this month I was innocently Googling, when I came across this bastard who claimed that Staten Island "doesn't seem to have any bookstores."

Let me prove that blatant anti-Statenism wrong! 

A ten-minute walk from my house, down scenic tree-lined St. Mark's Place to Bay Street, is Every Thing Goes Book Café, which is a combo coffee shop/performance space/bookstore that brings me back to my former hometown of Northampton, Mass. (or as Newsweek profiled it in 1993, "Lesbianville, USA"), right down to the Celtic warbles of Loreena McKennitt played over the P.A. 

On first sight, the round tables and organic muffin counter with a tea leaf menu look like it's just a coffee shop, with the few bookcases on the back wall looking as ornamental as the locally-produced paintings that hang on the wall. But go up the backstairs, and one realizes that the entire ground floor of the house is a bookstore, with a surprising range of subjects and relatively obscure titles (two that caught my eye on my first visit were a "History of Gesture" and the libretto to Philip Glass's "Satyagraha," which had as a momento/bookmark a polaroid of a straight-out-of-the-'70s dude with afro and plaid shirt. 

The back room also contains an impressive amount of 12-inch records, VHS cassette tapes, old newsprint-paged comic books, even abandoned family photos - all sorts of ephemera! My sentimental self has a great fondness for that sort of thing. 

Yet ANOTHER aspect which I liked was the store's back yard! - several wooden patio chairs and metal-grille tables set by a wall covered with ivy, a steep hill covered with saplings and bushes, and all under the shade of maple strees. When I went there with my friend Everett, we sat and threw dried maple seeds at each other in helicopter-spirals while hearing the birds call. Pleasantly surprised to find a taste of suburbia in the five boroughs, he half-jokingly asked me, "We're in New York City?"

They claim to be Staten Island's biggest used bookstore, and so far I would believe them. My only complaint is that their dreadlock-cap and loose-skirt wearing waitstaff/cashiers are more adept at running a café than ringing up the books. I found it hard to find prices marked in their books, and I haven't heard back from them in almost two weeks after they promised to call me about the price of "Satyagraha." Oh well, I own too many books anyway, and Every Thing Goes also offers performances, lectures, act auctions, and is associated with three other collectively-owned businesses: a thrift clothing store, a thrift furniture store, and an antiques gallery, all within the St. George neighborhood. More on this place to come.

I also read in yesterday's Staten Island Advance that there is another bookstore opening today in Stapleton, a neighborhood just south of St. George...

Bent Pages - a woman-owned, feminist-friendly establishment that offers books by women authors, LGBTQ-related tomes, and overall progressive titles. The Victorian storefront is apparently painted purple. Good luck to the owners of Bent Pages, for adding one more bookstore to an Island that's bound to have lots more unexpected boons.