
Capitol Hill Books Has DC’s Most Curmudgeonly Store Owner - polpenn
https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/05/27/capitol-hill-books-jim-toole-curmudgeonly-rules-signs/
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HillRat
It's sad that, the more I live off my Kindle, the less serendipity I let into
my reading life. There's something about the _experience_ of a bookstore --
thumbing through a commentary on Origen in the Strand's basement and feeling
the subway rattle the walls, finding a classic dime-store noir novel at Kayo,
happening upon a first edition of Nabakov at McMurtry's Booked Up -- that
gives you the sense of finding something secret, knowledge hidden away in the
mouse-eaten pages of a volume buried deep in the stacks; books too rare, too
obscure to ever make it to the clean and spacious realm of digitization. Now
I'm mostly likely to just check out the daily and monthly deals in the Kindle
store and never set foot in an actual store. I think I'm the poorer for it.

~~~
ashleyblackmore
What's stopping you from ditching the kindle and finding a bookstore?

~~~
HillRat
Part of it is no longer having eighty linear feet of ten-foot high bookcases
anymore, part of it is just that the Kindle is so damned _convenient_ for most
books, and Safari only slightly less so. (And it's not as if I don't visit
bookstore at all -- I walked out of a used bookstore the other day with a
monograph on NLP and a copy of _The Grand Strategy of Phillip II_ , both of
which were serendipitous finds.)

But there's definitely a crowding-out effect with e-books, or even Amazon's
many books for a penny (plus S&H). With Amazon, I no longer have to search
widely for a particular book or topic, but that also means I'm not going to
randomly wander through other sections and suddenly discover buried gold. In a
certain sense, I have more information about a narrow segment of the market --
the specific book I'm looking for -- but less information about the market in
general.

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TeMPOraL
I like his style. It seems honest. Most of his rules described in the article
are reasonable (like those about backpacks or cellphones). His book
classification is strongly opinionated, but I'd consider it a feature.

> _The customer isn’t always right. I am. People don’t like that. They think I
> should be groveling—I don’t grovel._

Again, very honest, and I think he has a point. Most businesses today are run
according to "customer is always right - as long as he pays" principle. I.e.
they'll pander to you if they can make money, but the moment the transaction
is done (or you're deemed more trouble than you're worth), you're treated as
trash[0]. I personally prefer an up-front shopkeeper than one that pretends to
be my friend (and one that is honest-to-God friendly ends up getting my repeat
business, including buying things I don't really need just because I like
them).

[0] - See e.g. subthread about coffee shops here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11802667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11802667).
It's all super cute and lovely as long as you take your coffee and quickly
leave.

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jrockway
Hah, this is the perfect embodiment of why I rarely patronize local
businesses. The kind of person who starts one of these establishments is no
doubt quirky.

There is a coffee shop next door to my apartment. It has random rules posted
on all surfaces to which signs can be affixed. Feel like I'm going to go to
prison if I walk in there and do something wrong inadvertently, so I just go
to Starbucks to avoid causing any problems. I like that these people are
running a coffee shop, and I'd like to support them. But it's just too scary
for me. Better to stick with something inviting, or at least known.

My favorite part of this article is how the owner doesn't say he runs the
bookstore solely to overhear people's conversations, but it seems clear to me
that that's his main reason. Rules about what you cannot say, "I don't like
cell phones because you can only hear one side of the conversation", etc. I'll
pass.

Maybe this is all an east coast thing, though. In Chicago I never noticed
local businesses being quirky (and I'll go out of my way to get coffee at
Intelligentsia). Same with Mountain View. But everyone in New York has quite
the desire to become king or queen of their own empire, and are sure to let
you know it.

~~~
vacri
> _he runs the bookstore solely to overhear people 's conversations_

This is a really weird thing to come away with. Hell, I remember as mobile
phones were starting to become popular, there were more than a few comedians
that had "how irritating it is to hear one half of a conversation" as part of
their acts. It's not about eavesdropping, it's about a broken cadence.

~~~
yuhong
I wonder if there are any who look at the network traffic on the Wi-Fi
network.

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AstroJetson
Been there and he has some great selections. So it's a fun trip. Most used
book sellers I go to up and down the east coast are about the same level of
"Happy to help you buy stuff, happy to help you out the door if you are
annoying". Most used book people are not in it for a huge ROI, they are book
lovers.

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vas123
3rd pic down in the bottom left, you can see "Surely Your Joking Mr. Feynman".
Seems this bookshop owner has some good taste in what he chooses to stock :)

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aedron
Yelp reviews, since the article didn't link them:

[http://www.yelp.com/biz/capitol-hill-books-
washington](http://www.yelp.com/biz/capitol-hill-books-washington)

LOL, choice quote:

"When I spoke to the owner (an elderly cantankerous man) about trading some
books with him, he was extremely rude. When he asked why I had so many copies
of several books, I told him I had a TBI and forgot that I already had the
books. He turned to my husband and very sarcastically offered his condolences.
" (1/5)

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vijayr
I really like this person.

 _I hear “Perfect,” I hear “Like, like, like, like,” and I hear “Awesome”
every 32 seconds and it was causing me to have brain damage_

 _They love to leave the doors open so I can try to air condition the
outside._

 _I don’t let computer books in here because they are obsolete the day they’re
printed._

And perhaps the best _The customer isn’t always right. I am._

Now I really want to visit this store.

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mrbill
See also: Quarter-Price Books in Houston. Love the place, and the owner (while
not quite as Book Nazi as this guy) is equally crabby.

Just don't go there during the summer. It's not airconditioned well.

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rekner
It's actually quite a nice store, you see funny comments on most of the books.

And the owner really does seem to know his stuff. I bought Godel, Escher, Bach
by Douglas Hofstadeter and while I was paying he was like.

So you getting this? I got through a quarter of the book before I realized I
was too stupid to understand it. -Hahaha well I can only hope that I will -You
need more than that

Still haven't read the book but I'll surely remember him when I happen to
don't understand the book

~~~
Retra
That book has a wonderful point, it just doesn't express it very concisely. I
don't blame the author for this though, since I don't think we actually have
the language to express that kind of stuff concisely.

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cafard
It is unfortunately out of my usual rounds. Supposedly the late owner of Idle
Time Books in Adams-Morgan was known to give a hard time to buyers in search
of books he didn't care for-- _The Bridges of Madison County_ is the example I
think I recall.

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WalterBright
I'd love to visit his store. It's awesome^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H dazz.

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wahsd
Something that looking at this post reminded me of is how all our
digitalization is very much abdicating control of information and even down
right ownership.

Does anyone remember the incident where Amazon just decided that they needed
to delete books they had sold to Kindle users and just went in and did so off
everyone's Kindle?

We have even arrived at the point where people don't even question ownership
anymore. You can't give or sell your books, you can't buy second hand books,
you can't sell your digital movies, etc. I thought I recalled either a court
case or policy effort to make transfer and sharing of materials possible so
you could, e.g., lend your friend a movie or book, and so you could sell a
digital copy at a discounted rate.

I don't think people quite appreciate the ramifications of this, because sure,
now it only extends to digital content, but how soon before other industries
get the bright idea that you are only buying the "license" to the disign of
their furniture and the design of their car and they are giving you the
materials for free to use, you know, like it currently is with digital
content, and then they make it illegal to sell your furniture or car or any
other object that you are only licensing the deign of.

Because we know that it's not like movies or music has gotten any cheaper with
the absence of the roughly 70% of production and distribution costs of
physical media that has now all gone to profit.

~~~
mryan
> Does anyone remember the incident where Amazon just decided that they needed
> to delete books they had sold to Kindle users and just went in and did so
> off everyone's Kindle?

Yes. Amusingly, the books in the case I remember were Nineteen Eighty-Four and
Animal Farm.

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wahsd
I'm not quite sure what to make of a person like that offering a "post trump
America starter pack". I for one want to MAGA because I have the dignity not
to think that kind of book store is cool, or hip, or awesome or whatever the
hippest of the hip bearded man-bun donning hipsters use these days to describe
stuff they discover that was never lost or forgotten in the first place.

Interestingly enough, there are quite a few of these weird ass hoarder book
stores in the DC area.

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bikamonki
_Curmudgeonly_

Had to look that one up...

