Friday, March 13, 2009

Kristin Gets Kulture

A. arrived yesterday, on time and mostly unscathed by his air travel, except for his irritation at the trio of obnoxious assholes behind him on their way to a sprinkler convention or something who spent the whole three hours talking about strip clubs, massage parlors, and Awesome Times They Got Wasted. Nice.

But! He did arrive. And fell into bed at 6:30 local time last night, so yesterday was not much of an exciting day. Today, however, we had big plans. Museums! Farmers market! Visiting my grandmother! We missed the farmers market, my grandmother was asleep when we arrived, and the museums were interesting, but the real highlight of the day? Bookman's.

I LOVE Bookman's. I had totally forgotten it existed, but now that I'm reminded of its existence, I really, really wish we had such a thing in New York near our house. Bookman's is a local business with a couple of locations in Tucson. It's a bookstore mostly, though they have other media there, too. But the best thing about Bookman's is that it's all used books. AND, you can bring in your old books, CD's, movies, etc. and exchange them for new (used) ones. I love this concept. AND AND, it's huge. It's like a used book superstore. They also have those cushy arm chairs and don't care how long you sit to read. Plus, the employees are all bearded dudes in tie-dye and Birkenstocks, or girls in long, flowy hippie skirts and lots of piercings. Bob Marley is played heavily in the store. It's got a good vibe, man.

And books. So many, many books. For cheap. A. got an old textbook entitled "Sheep Science" and one of the multiple "Dune" books, and I found a few frothy paperbacks for the plane. Six books for $30. We could have stayed there all day browsing, but we had museums to get to, culture to absorb. So we reluctantly moved on.

I would totally open a Bookman's franchise near Blackrock, except where would my employees come from? No one back home wears tie-dye and Birkenstocks. Work boots and Carhartt apparel just wouldn't do it. I guess I'll have to keep coming to Tucson for my Bookman's fix.

6 comments:

Aunt Krissy said...

Up in AK we had a book store called
Title Wave. It was a large huge used book store. They buy your used books and then you got in store credit to buy books. Also cheep.
And yep, it was very hippy dippy. I miss that place. It was fun.

Susan said...

There are no bookstores here that make it pleasant to sit and browse. We do have plenty of tie-dye, though. Maybe you could open one here?

Kay said...

You could start a new sub-kulture at home and start wearing those hippy skirts and tie-dyed tees (over long-johns in the winter of course.)

Start one! And have puppies for more comfort with the big squishy chairs.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I think I would totally dig Bookman's. I would come to it if you opened one in New York.... like, once, because it would be a really, really long drive.

Glad you two are having fun!

Chiot's Run said...

I would love that place. Until they put one here I'll have to be satisfied buying & selling my books on Amazon.

Anonymous said...

Was one of the museums going to be the Desert Museum?!
(Bookman's sounds pretty awesome, too.)