Behavioral Observations of Strand Customers/New Yorkers
The Strand is big used book store located in a popular area in Manhattan. According to the sign out front, it is the biggest used book store in the world. The store itself takes up four stories of an 11-story building, with an additional two stories for storage and warehouse. The four stories that are open to shopping for customers go from the basement to the third floor. They are each pretty extensive in their own right, with shelves of books as far as the eye can see. Strand advertises 18 miles of books for sale.
What is unique about it is that all the books have come from the city of New York in some way. Strand not only is a great place to buy books, but also to sell them. People come from miles around to sell their old collections in great volumes. Strand buys a lot from people. Strand also buys books in great numbers directly from publishers, many of which are situated here in New York. Strand also conducts a great deal of internet business. Strand works with other websites like Amazon and Barnes and Noble to get the most revenue out of their unique situation. They have got it down to a science, figuring out what to buy and at what cost, then turning around and selling it and at what price.
So far, it has been very successful. The man who founded and owns Strand owns the entire building in which it stands, renting out the other floors to other unique businesses, all the while collecting the profits from a bookstore that has achieved greatness far beyond the expectations of a normal bookstore. It is world renowned; generating its reputation merely by word-of-mouth, and it is quite a landmark in New York. Many people would miss it if it were to someday vanish.
That being said, Strand is home to a great many unique customers and employees, such as yours truly. The coolest part about working there is that I get to hang around in an old building all day. Old New York buildings are pretty cool to me, with their aging, yet solid, foundations, narrow staircases and passageways, antiquated facades, intricate architecture. Many points during the work day, I have to ride the freight elevator up and down, lugging boxes of books on dollies and hand trucks. The freight elevator, as most freight elevators in the city of New York, is operated by Strand's own operators. These drivers are in charge of opening and closing the gate to make sure one doesn't fall out into the elevator shaft as well as guiding the elevator precisely to its destination, making sure the floor level of the elevator lines up with the floor level of the ground outside. Very old school. And very cool.
I also work in the basement of this 11-story building, so I have to deal with everything a New York basement has to offer, including cockroaches, puddles of water forming in random places, and very little air circulation. The other cool part about working at the Strand is the hefty discount I get on books and merchandise. It has inspired me to repopulate my bookshelf at home with anything that looks remotely interesting that I might get to reading long after I've left this job. Being surrounded by books all day keeps my interest piqued as I get to read paragraphs at a time from all kinds of different subject matter. It also inspires me to write more.
About the customers, though, one could tell all kinds of different stories. As with any job in retail, the customers provide all, if any, enjoyment the job creates for its keeper. I've narrowed the customers down to a few different types. Before I go into the dynamics of each customer grouping, it is important to realize a few things about New Yorkers. Firstly, New Yorkers are all weird in their own right. There is no other way to describe it. If New York is one thing, it is a giant melting pot of weirdness. People leave their hometowns so they can come be weird here. Only the true weirdos live in New York. The second thing to remember is that everyone reads here. That, in itself, is weird to me, as I am used to people watching TV and movies and only reading when it is required, and trying to get out of that as much as possible. To even think about reading for recreation sounds like a job to me. It sounds like a tremendous amount of work, and I don't want to do it. In New York, however, everyone reads. I have a theory on this: everyone reads in New York because they don't have to drive anywhere.
If one thinks about this, one would realize that while the majority of Americans are driving to work, driving to school, driving anywhere because it is the most logical way to get places, people in New York, are sitting on buses, sitting on subway trains, sitting on commuter trains, just waiting to get to their destinations. And while some people choose to entertain themselves with music or video from a portable MP3 or DVD player, a great deal of them choose to educate or stimulate themselves by reading newspapers, magazines, and books. Books, books, and more books. These readers don't have to pay attention to the road or other drivers, all they have to do is wait and listen for their stop to be called. They don't even have to look up. Most people are just sitting or standing around anyway, and it is usually pretty quiet, so the environment on public transportation is very conducive to reading. New Yorkers read, that's what they do. They read so much, in fact, that they anticipate books coming out, searching out stores and shelves for new releases like some other people would do for movies or music CD's. This pretty much blows my mind. Yet, they do it. That's what is weird about New Yorkers.
The two main divisions of customers that we have at Strand are the upper-class Manhattan intellectuals and the hipster youth. The upper-class Manhattan intellectuals are not necessarily all upper class, but they would be in the higher-than-median-income division of wealth. They might not even be that intellectual, but they read for recreation, or as least feign reading, for the sake of how their bookshelves look to anybody who might see them. Whether they read them or not, they buy books for one reason or another, and this obviously is of great benefit to Strand.
These people who live on the Upper East Side or the Upper West Side or downtown or in Greenwich Village or Chelsea or Gramercy Park or New Jersey or Park Slope or anyplace in New York that is expensive, which is most of Manhattan and some of the nicer neighborhoods of the surrounding burghs, file in everyday, lists in hand, of the books they wish to purchase. Or maybe they don't know exactly what they want, they just know the author, and so they have to look up the title of the book. Which is why they come to me, because I have a name tag, but I mostly just send them to the info desk.
Some of these Manhattan intellectuals take the form of a special group of people we like to call "proofies". Strand is a unique store in the fact that it gets so many copies of its books directly from publishers and reviewers, which is how it is able to sell books months before they are actually released in nationwide bookstores like Barnes & Noble or Borders. Some of the books that arrive early come in the form of "proofs", which are copies of books that have been edited to the point where the content is the same as when it will be officially released in a few months, but maybe there are one or two things that will get changed after the book gets reviewed. They are always paperback and they all say "Not intended for sale" on them, but we sell them anyway, in a special section in the back of the basement, for $1.50 a piece, which is why they are so sought after. The proofs take up three rows of shelves in the back, but the "proofies" are so hungry for cheap books, they will clear out a single shelf in less than an hour. Soon enough, it will be up to a person like me to put out a box of proofs.
The "proofies" hover around the area where the empty shelf is until I get there to put the box out. These people also have a particular smell, as one might expect people who relentlessly hunt for $1.50 versions of books would have a particular smell. The boxes of proofs come in dozens at a time, so we have plenty to spare, it's just amazing that these people come so often to clear the area of new proofs, so that others might not get them. In fact, I have been told that fights have broken out in that particular section, which is why rules have been set in place now for the "proofies". No person is allowed to touch a book until an employee has placed it securely on the shelf, meaning nobody can reach into the box and claim something before someone else has had a chance to see it. If anybody does reach into the box, I'm allowed to slap them. Actually that's not true.
The next group of customers at Strand are the hipster youth of New York, who dominate the colleges and art schools of New York, and live in areas like the West and East Villages, the Lower East Side, and Williamsburg, in Brooklyn. Hipsters are usually easily identified as wearing clothing that is tight but not flattering, including "vintage" T-shirts and jeans, shoes that have little to no character, and/or "trendy" glasses, like the black, horn-rimmed variety. These people tend to have either gone already or are going to college, are up on things, and are eager to learn more or spout their knowledge on the world via their views on music or poetry or explore their own creative tendencies through art or music or poetry. Hipsters are more easily identifiable by their behavioral characteristics, rather than their physical characteristics, such as their general hippie-like attitudes, smoking a lot of pot, listening to indie rock music, being on birth control, and talking from the left side of their asses about politics.
Strand is situated in Union Square, in New York, which is right around NYU, so the area is rich with these types of people. While there are quite a few who are intelligent, beautiful, and entertaining people, they still exhibit a good deal of naivety, which makes it hard for me to take seriously when someone asks me, "I think I want to start getting into mysteries, do you have any recommendations?" I would have liked to recommend not bothering me, as I only have an hour left in my shift, and I'd like to sneak in a few more pages of that book about why men have a higher sperm count than women.
The rest of the customers are pretty much normal people who come in casually and are not really looking for anything in particular. Or else they come in looking for something very specific and are wondering if we have it in our gigantic library of used books. I try to help these people as much as I can, but if I can't I would say something like this, "I'm sorry, sir, I don't know for sure if we have a book specifically on riding horses at night during a full moon in a desert in Spain, but take a look in our Equestrian section in Sports."
Strand has a lot of books, but they don't have everything. Even Strand has some limits. But the great thing about it is that there is generally something in the store that could appeal to everyone. A person who reads could find any number of books that would be interesting to read, from tractor-trailer transportation to Eastern religions to the Battle of the Bulge to the latest by your favorite obscure author or blog-writer. ;-) They also have a phenomenal rare books department, children's department, and art department. They run events with authors like book signings and video presentations. Even if one doesn't read, one could find enjoyment in the store, just looking through books or investigating the CD or DVD rack, or making use of the public restrooms! They also have a great deal of merchandise, such as T-shirts, umbrellas, and tote bags, which everybody and their mom seems to have in New York.
Strand has been good for me. I can say I have enjoyed working there, even though the work is none too thrilling. The people are great, and I have gained a perspective of New York and the world I would not have had otherwise. I hope others who go there to shop can appreciate it as I have.
What is unique about it is that all the books have come from the city of New York in some way. Strand not only is a great place to buy books, but also to sell them. People come from miles around to sell their old collections in great volumes. Strand buys a lot from people. Strand also buys books in great numbers directly from publishers, many of which are situated here in New York. Strand also conducts a great deal of internet business. Strand works with other websites like Amazon and Barnes and Noble to get the most revenue out of their unique situation. They have got it down to a science, figuring out what to buy and at what cost, then turning around and selling it and at what price.
So far, it has been very successful. The man who founded and owns Strand owns the entire building in which it stands, renting out the other floors to other unique businesses, all the while collecting the profits from a bookstore that has achieved greatness far beyond the expectations of a normal bookstore. It is world renowned; generating its reputation merely by word-of-mouth, and it is quite a landmark in New York. Many people would miss it if it were to someday vanish.
That being said, Strand is home to a great many unique customers and employees, such as yours truly. The coolest part about working there is that I get to hang around in an old building all day. Old New York buildings are pretty cool to me, with their aging, yet solid, foundations, narrow staircases and passageways, antiquated facades, intricate architecture. Many points during the work day, I have to ride the freight elevator up and down, lugging boxes of books on dollies and hand trucks. The freight elevator, as most freight elevators in the city of New York, is operated by Strand's own operators. These drivers are in charge of opening and closing the gate to make sure one doesn't fall out into the elevator shaft as well as guiding the elevator precisely to its destination, making sure the floor level of the elevator lines up with the floor level of the ground outside. Very old school. And very cool.
I also work in the basement of this 11-story building, so I have to deal with everything a New York basement has to offer, including cockroaches, puddles of water forming in random places, and very little air circulation. The other cool part about working at the Strand is the hefty discount I get on books and merchandise. It has inspired me to repopulate my bookshelf at home with anything that looks remotely interesting that I might get to reading long after I've left this job. Being surrounded by books all day keeps my interest piqued as I get to read paragraphs at a time from all kinds of different subject matter. It also inspires me to write more.
About the customers, though, one could tell all kinds of different stories. As with any job in retail, the customers provide all, if any, enjoyment the job creates for its keeper. I've narrowed the customers down to a few different types. Before I go into the dynamics of each customer grouping, it is important to realize a few things about New Yorkers. Firstly, New Yorkers are all weird in their own right. There is no other way to describe it. If New York is one thing, it is a giant melting pot of weirdness. People leave their hometowns so they can come be weird here. Only the true weirdos live in New York. The second thing to remember is that everyone reads here. That, in itself, is weird to me, as I am used to people watching TV and movies and only reading when it is required, and trying to get out of that as much as possible. To even think about reading for recreation sounds like a job to me. It sounds like a tremendous amount of work, and I don't want to do it. In New York, however, everyone reads. I have a theory on this: everyone reads in New York because they don't have to drive anywhere.
If one thinks about this, one would realize that while the majority of Americans are driving to work, driving to school, driving anywhere because it is the most logical way to get places, people in New York, are sitting on buses, sitting on subway trains, sitting on commuter trains, just waiting to get to their destinations. And while some people choose to entertain themselves with music or video from a portable MP3 or DVD player, a great deal of them choose to educate or stimulate themselves by reading newspapers, magazines, and books. Books, books, and more books. These readers don't have to pay attention to the road or other drivers, all they have to do is wait and listen for their stop to be called. They don't even have to look up. Most people are just sitting or standing around anyway, and it is usually pretty quiet, so the environment on public transportation is very conducive to reading. New Yorkers read, that's what they do. They read so much, in fact, that they anticipate books coming out, searching out stores and shelves for new releases like some other people would do for movies or music CD's. This pretty much blows my mind. Yet, they do it. That's what is weird about New Yorkers.
The two main divisions of customers that we have at Strand are the upper-class Manhattan intellectuals and the hipster youth. The upper-class Manhattan intellectuals are not necessarily all upper class, but they would be in the higher-than-median-income division of wealth. They might not even be that intellectual, but they read for recreation, or as least feign reading, for the sake of how their bookshelves look to anybody who might see them. Whether they read them or not, they buy books for one reason or another, and this obviously is of great benefit to Strand.
These people who live on the Upper East Side or the Upper West Side or downtown or in Greenwich Village or Chelsea or Gramercy Park or New Jersey or Park Slope or anyplace in New York that is expensive, which is most of Manhattan and some of the nicer neighborhoods of the surrounding burghs, file in everyday, lists in hand, of the books they wish to purchase. Or maybe they don't know exactly what they want, they just know the author, and so they have to look up the title of the book. Which is why they come to me, because I have a name tag, but I mostly just send them to the info desk.
Some of these Manhattan intellectuals take the form of a special group of people we like to call "proofies". Strand is a unique store in the fact that it gets so many copies of its books directly from publishers and reviewers, which is how it is able to sell books months before they are actually released in nationwide bookstores like Barnes & Noble or Borders. Some of the books that arrive early come in the form of "proofs", which are copies of books that have been edited to the point where the content is the same as when it will be officially released in a few months, but maybe there are one or two things that will get changed after the book gets reviewed. They are always paperback and they all say "Not intended for sale" on them, but we sell them anyway, in a special section in the back of the basement, for $1.50 a piece, which is why they are so sought after. The proofs take up three rows of shelves in the back, but the "proofies" are so hungry for cheap books, they will clear out a single shelf in less than an hour. Soon enough, it will be up to a person like me to put out a box of proofs.
The "proofies" hover around the area where the empty shelf is until I get there to put the box out. These people also have a particular smell, as one might expect people who relentlessly hunt for $1.50 versions of books would have a particular smell. The boxes of proofs come in dozens at a time, so we have plenty to spare, it's just amazing that these people come so often to clear the area of new proofs, so that others might not get them. In fact, I have been told that fights have broken out in that particular section, which is why rules have been set in place now for the "proofies". No person is allowed to touch a book until an employee has placed it securely on the shelf, meaning nobody can reach into the box and claim something before someone else has had a chance to see it. If anybody does reach into the box, I'm allowed to slap them. Actually that's not true.
The next group of customers at Strand are the hipster youth of New York, who dominate the colleges and art schools of New York, and live in areas like the West and East Villages, the Lower East Side, and Williamsburg, in Brooklyn. Hipsters are usually easily identified as wearing clothing that is tight but not flattering, including "vintage" T-shirts and jeans, shoes that have little to no character, and/or "trendy" glasses, like the black, horn-rimmed variety. These people tend to have either gone already or are going to college, are up on things, and are eager to learn more or spout their knowledge on the world via their views on music or poetry or explore their own creative tendencies through art or music or poetry. Hipsters are more easily identifiable by their behavioral characteristics, rather than their physical characteristics, such as their general hippie-like attitudes, smoking a lot of pot, listening to indie rock music, being on birth control, and talking from the left side of their asses about politics.
Strand is situated in Union Square, in New York, which is right around NYU, so the area is rich with these types of people. While there are quite a few who are intelligent, beautiful, and entertaining people, they still exhibit a good deal of naivety, which makes it hard for me to take seriously when someone asks me, "I think I want to start getting into mysteries, do you have any recommendations?" I would have liked to recommend not bothering me, as I only have an hour left in my shift, and I'd like to sneak in a few more pages of that book about why men have a higher sperm count than women.
The rest of the customers are pretty much normal people who come in casually and are not really looking for anything in particular. Or else they come in looking for something very specific and are wondering if we have it in our gigantic library of used books. I try to help these people as much as I can, but if I can't I would say something like this, "I'm sorry, sir, I don't know for sure if we have a book specifically on riding horses at night during a full moon in a desert in Spain, but take a look in our Equestrian section in Sports."
Strand has a lot of books, but they don't have everything. Even Strand has some limits. But the great thing about it is that there is generally something in the store that could appeal to everyone. A person who reads could find any number of books that would be interesting to read, from tractor-trailer transportation to Eastern religions to the Battle of the Bulge to the latest by your favorite obscure author or blog-writer. ;-) They also have a phenomenal rare books department, children's department, and art department. They run events with authors like book signings and video presentations. Even if one doesn't read, one could find enjoyment in the store, just looking through books or investigating the CD or DVD rack, or making use of the public restrooms! They also have a great deal of merchandise, such as T-shirts, umbrellas, and tote bags, which everybody and their mom seems to have in New York.
Strand has been good for me. I can say I have enjoyed working there, even though the work is none too thrilling. The people are great, and I have gained a perspective of New York and the world I would not have had otherwise. I hope others who go there to shop can appreciate it as I have.
posted by Leland J. Fischer at 10:40 PM
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