The first bookstore I worked for had a distinctive personality: an older B. Dalton (remember them?) in Greenwich Village NYC, open daily until midnight, it attracted students and faculty from NYU, people who lived in the bohemian West Village, and bold personalities from all over the village and alphabet city. The store was slightly run-down but decorated with huge photos of the White Horse Tavern and other neighborhood landmarks.

Visitors from the corporate office stood out like a sore thumb in their grey flannel suits – we could see them coming a mile away. Even when B. Dalton was purchased by B&N, there was a tension between what corporate thought we should do and what would most appeal to our distinctive customers.

For example, we held signings with Brett Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, Spike Lee. (The Spike Lee signing was memorable because he threw a pen at a bookseller because it was the wrong color, he said. The truth was that they had scheduled this signing before the playoffs were finalized for that year and the Yankees were up against the Twins and he was stuck in a bookstore signing books instead of watching the game. And someone had handed him a pen the wrong color.) These got okay turnouts.

The biggest turnout that I remember was for a tall author, with nightcrawler pale skin, black eyeliner, red eyes, bleached hair, in a long leather coat. He had written a fan bio of Charles Manson. The line went out the door, down the block, around the corner. I didn’t read this book – Charles Manson bores me and, if I ever want to know more than I learned in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I’ll read Helter Skelter.

The other huge turnout was for this book: a history of LSD, starting with the invention, through its use by the OSI and CIA, through Timothy Leary, and up until the book was published in the early ‘80s.

Since originally reading this book, I’ve read more about this in other places – usually in bits and pieces, in books on other topics – but, at the time, this was all new information to me. It made me want to read more about the origins of the CIA, MKULTRA, the 60s scene, etc… It didn’t make me want to try LSD.

If you want an approachable, engaging history of the impact of LSD, this book is for you.

As for my old stomping ground, B&N made the mistake of converting it to the Barnes & Noble format – green carpeting, dark wood, marble, Florentine wallpaper, and brass accents. All the localization was stripped out so it totally didn’t fit in with the neighborhood. And it was closed for a year while the remodel happened. Never recovered after that.

Since B&N left, the building stood empty for years; and someone painted a huge 2-story mural of a bear on it, which was awesome. Now it’s a cell phone store – what a waste of space.

You can’t go home again.