PrettyFakes

According to Baton Rouge old-timers—keeping in mind that I’m defining “old-timer” as anyone who has lived here longer than the eyeblink not-quite-year that we’ve been here—Florida Boulevard used to be one of the city’s major thoroughfares. The “old” mall is still there, and car dealerships by the sackful, but in general it’s gotten more dilapidated—if indeed it was lapidated in the first place—and frayed, the whole long strip a stretch of weedy asphalt and garish neon. It has the appearance of a street populated with stores whose light-switch plates are all missing at least one screw.

Which is to say, it’s awesome. Or it has been, because it has been the case that, despite its general air of shabbiness, its stores are open, commerce is happening, et cetera. The jewel in Florida Blvd’s tinfoil-and-pimento crown has always been the Book Warehouse. I ignored this place for the first few months we were here, assuming it was just another remainder-closeout shop of the sort you see everywhere; good for killing a few minutes while you’re waiting on a table to open up at a restaurant, but not a place you were likely to find very interesting.

But o, was I ever wrong. Thanks to newly minted Chicagoan Dr. Catpants, I discovered that there was more to this BW than I had believed. For instance: you know how some bookstores will also sell coffee? Well—this one doesn’t do that. In addition, however, to new books, used books, remaindered books, and comic books, it also has a sizable grocery section. And that’s not all. If you’re wondering where you can go in Baton Rouge to get a goat, well, wonder no more:

So that’s what you might call an unorthodox business model. My favorite thing about that ad is the eleventh-hour addition of “young” up in the top left corner. I can just imagine Gerald and his wife, who I’ll call Martha, sitting on the porch of their home, the ground invisible beneath a teeming horde of obese, rock-pated livestock, wondering why their ad just isn’t moving the product. “Oh, did you mention they were young?” Martha asks. “Because nobody wants an old fat goat.” And then she says “I should know” and gives Gerald a meaningful look. At which point Gerald sighs and turns off his hearing aid.

Anyway, apparently figuring that words were not enough, they later posted a picture of the li’l things:

Unfortunately, despite their blitzkreig marketing campaign and their innovative books, goats, and groceries business plan, the Book Warehouse is going out of business. It’s a cause for much sadness; we don’t have a really top-flight non-goated used bookstore here, a la Knoxville’s McKay’s, or a good Lemuria-style indie store. We’ve got a perfectly nice Barnes and Noble, which I’m not going to hate on, but it is sort of sad to go into the cafe there and see a dozen or so people scattered about, all on their wireless-networked laptops, working in isolation, and contrast that with the occasionally Fellini-esque riot of humanity at the BW, moving through the shelves with a loaf of bread, a fudgesicle, and a water-damaged copy of Franklin Graham’s Rebel with a Cause.

That said, I’m certainly not above feasting on its carcass, and I spent a couple hours yesterday at their going-out-of-business sale. Some genres—school reading list fiction, for instance—are marked down a respectable but not outlandish 25 or 30 percent. Other genres, though, might be feeling a little embarassed:

Not that I’m complaining! I filled myself up a bagful, believe you me. Some were books I was interested in, some I just felt a little sorry for. Like this one:

This dude must have been the very last one in line when they were handing out code names for down-n-dirty former special ops soldiers-of-fortune types. You just know the Executioner and the Enforcer are always conveniently finding ways to “accidentally” leave him off the reunion list. On the other hand, note that this volume is number 43 in the series. So somebody’s buying ‘em. Probably the Penetrator’s mom. Actually, I’m predicting a Penetrator revival in the global pop-cultural psyche; if you’ll note, the Penetrator (I just like to type it) is going after a “Nazi league.” It seems to me that a certain international megastar might enjoy acting in an action-movie franchise that allowed him to bathe in the blood of Nazi soldiers and, um, psychiatrists.

Another of my favorite unofficial genres, as I may’ve mentioned here before, is the paranoid right-wing/fundamentalist hysteria fiction. So I picked some of these up, too:

It’s too bad that Hal Lindsey doesn’t spell his name like Lindsay Lohan, because that would totally be an awesome “Before and After” clue on Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy. Convenient and concise, too, because “Nutso Prophet of the Apocalypse” applies equally to both of them.

And this one. Somebody’s been allegorizing their Tolkein again!

And I picked this one up just because it looks cool:

Ah, well. Farewell, Book Warehouse! We’ll miss you, and will pray that something nearly as cool fills your ill-fitting, malodorous, and hole-soled shoes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 30th, 2005 at 10:52 am and is filed under Books, In the South, Professor Fury, Red Stick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.