Category Archives: Buffalo
Of Dante Place Misadventures
a fragment of a story…
Should you survive the journey by barge from the eastern harbors, you may find yourself murdered, robbed, beaten, assaulted, harassed, molested or unusually prodded by a variety of creatures, most of which are employed to prevent against such things. If you are fortunate enough to emerge from that cesspool of thievery and drunkenness and general debauchery that is Dante Place, you may be greeted by a rather unusual sight: electric streetlights.
Believed to be something between a miracle of the new scientific age and a modern day form of witchcraft, my father was the first man to be electrocuted by these marvels of the technological age.
The news account of the day varied as the journalists volleyed their outrageous claims of the dangers of the untested and unreliable phenomenon to increase their own paper’s circulation. But the general opinion, reinforced by the police inquiry’s official determination, was death by misadventure.
So You Want to Work in a Bookstore: Lesson 8 | Your Coworkers
Let me tell you something about the people you’ll work with in a bookstore: there will be a lot of them. A bookstore is a retail store and working retail is not for the faint of heart. You need a strong back, a tough skin and a sick ability to be abused by customers and coworkers alike and still smile. A lot of them will be gone before you commit their names to memory, and some will stick around far past the point you feel they should. Some will have surprisingly little interest in reading or selling books, or in doing much of anything.
And then there are some who will remind you in everything they do that life should not be measured by sales trends and customer counts and goal sheets, its not all about the paycheck and the to-do lists; they will remind you that the most important stories in your bookstore are not the ones you’re selling, but those that you are experiencing. They will show you that the bookstore itself is your story, or at least part of it, and it is filled with characters who are boring, or quirky, infuriating, confusing (or just plain confused), energetic, heartbreaking and soul-saving. Some of these will be short stories, some will be stories that are never finished, some are epic narratives that span decades and intersect a thousand other stories in ways you could never expect.
Today, this lesson, is about one coworker specifically, because today (right now, actually) we’re celebrating the retirement of Gerriann, who has spent the last twenty-two years not only selling books and running bookclubs, but has kept us all smiling and sane, and more importantly, she’s fed us. A happy bookseller is the one who just a got a free meal, and Gerri has been the heart, soul and oven behind more well-fed booksellers and bookstore pot-lucks than you can imagine.
I was asked to write a short bio of Gerri to submit to our company newsletter, celebrating her service to company, to the store, to our customers, our staff and the world of literature in general. And in typical Gerrian fashion, she then basically wrote the article herself. Instead of letting me interview her, she left in my mailbox a completed (albeit brief) autobiography that began with her as a little girl, first falling in love with books. Easiest assignment I have ever had.
So, when it is so easy to overlook the people working at the stores we shop in, I want to share with you this article I “wrote” and let you meet a bookseller who’s well-deserved retirement is going to leave our store with a little less laughter and little bit hungrier, and with a great story for having known her.
“Growing up, reading was my favorite pastime, whether I was in my treehouse or riding my horse. Not surprisingly, the Black Stallion series was one of my favorites. And when I wasn’t reading, I spent a lot of time volunteering and working in children’s libraries, where my own passion for these stories developed into a deep knowledge of children’s literature.
In 1992, i was working for a clothing retailer when I heard from a friend that [the company] was hiring for two new stores in Western New York. On my lunch hour I went for an interview (I always kept a resume in my car) and was hired on the spot as an assistant manager in one of the stores. That was the start of my love affair with the bookselling business, and 20 years later, I’m still in love with it.
Now, I’m the merchandise manager. I love working the salesfloor with our great staff and talking to customers about our favorite books, recommending new authors to them and even learning of a few myself.
Thirteen years ago, I joined the Historical Fiction book club with Fay, who runs our children’s storytimes, and our group still has many of the same members years later. With each book we choose, I always do a little research about the time period and the facts surrounding the story and give a handout to the group to take our discussion beyond just the novels themselves.
My love of children’s literature from my time working in libraries has only grown… and has extended into my volunteering with Project Flight, a local literacy group that puts books into the hands of children around the world.
Next week, I will start a new chapter in the Book of Life: retirement. I plan to volunteer full time with Project Flight, and maybe even start a storytime or book club in my neighborhood school. And it’s a safe bet you’ll see me at the store, sitting by the fireplace, reading a great novel and sipping my latte.”
I just want to point out that apparently, Gerri loved reading so much, she could do it while riding a horse. If that kind of dedication doesn’t foreshadow a career in the book industry, I don’t know what does.
So, here’s to retirement; and to all the little things future booksellers will only hear about… to the lasagna and salad and cookies, and the brownies with Snickers or Andes mints (and once, an Andes mint wrapper), to vegetables from your garden, and keeping the yogurt your doctor forced you to eat in the freezer to pretend it was ice cream, to the bookseller you practically adopted, who ended up marrying your son, and stories about your crazy cat and grumpy husband, who I was terrified would answer the phone anytime I had to call you; to the sand and beach balls you put in the store’s front windows for your ‘books for the beach’ display, to letting us film a Jewish rapper’s music video in the back hallway. Lil Benji’s career never quite took off, but I’m sure he never forgot your support, even if you have no idea what I’m talking about.
Here’s to always having an enthusiastic and a little bit loopy “OK!” or “uh HUH!” ready no matter what the question or request, and whether or not those responses actually answered the question; and you coming down with pneumonia because someone sneezed in the breakroom, and every other diseases or physical ailment you’ve “contracted” over the years. Why we didn’t all chip in a buy you a John Travolta-esque bubble suit years ago, I have no idea.
Gerri, here’s to being the other half of our merchandising team, and keeping me sane(ish) simply by reminding me that the business may change but at the heart of it all, we’re there to share books and engage the people who walk through the doors. Without taking the time to do that we won’t sell a thing, and no one involved, not the book buyers or the booksellers, will remember why being a part of this bookstore is so important. And here’s to—wait, did I mention the Andes brownies already?
And here’s to your coworkers, one of the reasons you should want to work in a bookstore.
Office Supply Therapy | a World of Possibilities
I assume most people have their own quirky habit for dealing with stress or bad days. Some people will go to the pet store and look at puppies, my friend has a cache of cute bunny pictures; some might go to the mall or a park and wander, just needing the presence of people and conversation surging around them to balance out whatever negative energy had thrown their day off.
Me? I like to wander around office supply stores.
Of my local options I prefer Office Max to Office Depot. I always have, but especially now that many Depot stores have closed or downsized. There’s also an Office Max in the plaza where I work, so its proximity to a constant source of my own mental unbalancing may have something to do with my affinity for it.
There’s something very calming, very soothing about office supply stores. I found a similar feeling a few weeks ago while wandering up and down the bourbon aisle at Premier, checking out interesting bottles, reading the manufacturer or employee write-ups that accompanied many of them. It was similar and led me to identify what it was I like so much about office supply stores, even as it wasn’t as intense a feeling. It was the possibility. Where the bourbon aisle offered great variety and possibility, it did so at the threat of my losing a night of productivity if I got carried away.
(I ended up with a bottle of Jim Beam that was on sale and a couple small sample bottles of Woodford Reserve and Bulleit Frontier Whiskey that I took my time trying out—a surprisingly responsible outcome considering my state of mind walking into the store).
But office supply stores offer possibility of another kind. The possibility of organization. I don’t consider myself a very organized person, despite being someone who really, really wants to be organized, and even was once. Briefly. I think. (That was an amazing ten minutes of my life) And here is this magical place, this world of office supply, where everything I could possibly need to get my shit together is there, it’s all there! If I went wild in that store with its plethora of options; clicky pens, whiteboards, cork boards, bookshelves, cabinets, trays, stack-able boxes, desks, corner desks, corner desks with bookshelves—don’t even get me started on the pens, there’d be no stopping me. I’d rule the world, and I could too because they also sell coffee and Twizzlers
This goes back to childhood, and running errands with my mother. Across from K-Mart was a little pair of stores, The Paper Cutter and Fay’s Drugs. I was always partial to the Paper Cutter, mostly due to the wall of pens they had in the back corner of the store near the photo counter. I think I learned to spell my name finally by trying out each and every pen they had over and over until I found the perfect one. I was very particular about pen tips, even then.
The Paper Cutter was where I bought a discounted copy of Lord of Chaos
And next door was Fay’s. Which, whatever, it was a drug store. We had to go there for my brother’s inhaler, but other than that, it didn’t appeal to me too much. I wanted to go next door to read comics. All of the comics.
The thing you should know about Fay’s, was it had the best bag. I know that sounds strange to say, but mention a Fay’s bag to anyone over thirty that lived in Buffalo. This might extend to more than Buffalo actually, since the company started in Fairport, New York and had their headquarters in Syracuse. This wasn’t just a local Buffalo thing.
I don’t know what it was about those plastic bags; that they were yellow when everyone else used white or brown? Or was it the plastic they used, weren’t they thicker than most other stores’ bags? Could have been the colors, the yellow bag and black design? It jumped out at you.
These bags were used and reused and reused, and they held up. Ten years after Fay’s was sold off and turned into Eckherd’s, I saw a homeless guy walking down Hertel Avenue with a Fay’s bag stuffed full. They’re still around. There may still be one in my parent’s hall closet full of winter hats and gloves. Those bags are indestructible. They’re legendary.
Gas Station Burrito 