Barnes & Noble is closing its flagship store on 5th Avenue and 18th Street. The economies of the book business and the real estate market are colliding; and we are losing this iconic store. The vestiges of my youth are disappearing. News of the store’s closing caused a slight shift in the tectonic plates of my psyche. That store has always been there; a mooring place in a city that’s changing at the speed of a New York Minute. Since the early 80’s, when I worked there during high school and college, I could count on the store being there. Walking around Manhattan over the past 30 years, I occasionally head into the store, finding comfort in the familiar: the aisles, the signs, the smells, the set-up. Sporadically during my college years, I was a messenger in Manhattan, delivering packages to banks and law firms; and I always oriented myself by the bookstore. Barnes and Noble as anchor point, 5th Avenue and 18th street, the dividing line between East and West and downtown and midtown.
Senior year in high school, 1980…
Glen Gruder, part of our East 4th Street crew, is
three years older than me. Glen’s a
junior at NYU during my senior at John Dewey High School. Late in his sophomore year at
NYU, Glen got a job at Barnes & Noble. Back in our neighborhood, hanging
out on Ronny Lopez’s stoop, Glen regaled us with stories of Greenwich Village,
of college courses, and of some of the characters he was meeting at the
bookstore. Towards the end of August Glen says, “Spinner, you should come into
the store, they always need guys.” Glen is not one to dole out praise, so I
always appreciated that he thought enough of me to recommend me for any number
of jobs, Barnes & Noble, Silver Lake, jobs that changed my life.
Talk about a kid in a candy store. An avid reader early on, I devoured books
through grammar school and into high school. I would not only be working in A bookstore but THE bookstore,
the main branch of Barnes & Noble; on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. According
to the 1980 Guinness Book of World Records, it’s the largest bookstore in world.
And I’m getting a job there! While most
of my friends toil in our neighborhood pizzerias, pharmacies and butcher shops,
I’ll be working in The City.
It’s an early September day of my senior year and my Barnes
& Noble interview keeps popping up in my thoughts. I leave John Dewey High
School around noon, catch the B train at Bay 50th Street and settle
in for the hour or so ride into Manhattan. After 3 years of commuting to Dewey
I’m a jaded straphanger. Book in hand, I veg out and read, maybe I even sleep. About
40 minutes into the ride I am shocked, like walking out of a movie theater in
the daytime, by sunlight. To get into Manhattan on the B, you cross the East
River via the Manhattan Bridge. There it
is before me, The City, the stuff of movies, picture Dorothy and company seeing
Oz for the first time. To the left the Brooklyn Bridge, the canyons of Wall Street,
the Twin Towers. As we clatter across, I’m a frenetic puppy, on the right side
of the train I see Chinatown, the Bowery, the FDR drive ribbons the river
towards the UN and the Citicorp Center. I don’t know how many times I’ve taken
the B train across the bridge but that view never gets old. Every day I commute
to the city, I put my book down and become a tourist.
Off the B train at Union Square. Now those of you who
remember Union Square in the early 80’s before Giuliani and Bloomberg cleaned
up the city, know Union Square was a scary place. Littered with newspapers, a
cast of seedy characters lurking around, everything engulfed by gray hulking
buildings, dirty squirrels skitter to lifeless trees. I’d heard the term Needle Park in movies and had
seen it in books, and from that day forward, I assumed Needle Park referred to
Union Square. Immediately, my city sense
told me to avoid Union Square, even in the daytime.
I make my way to the store, a wide-eyed boy among the tall
buildings, too spellbound to even act cool. On the corner of 5th Avenue and 18th Street I look up, Barnes & Noble in gold letters
across the front, two revolving doors, fancy. Emerging from the revolving door,
I am hit with new book smell. The
store is designed for movement, for volume. You enter to the right of where the cash registers
are, there are enough registers for 8 or so lines. I meander through the store, past all of the
displays, new Lawrence Sanders and Robert Ludlum hardcovers, past the different
sections, Fiction, Classic, Self-Help, Biography…fighting the urge to browse….I
find my way to textbooks for my interview with R.J. Odle. R.J.’s a good old boy from Arkansas. If I was
18, he was probably late 30’s. He was funny but odd. He’d lob inappropriate
jokes about pretty girls to show you that he was a regular guy. R.J. was a
touchy guy, he’d tap your knee, or rub your shoulder as he walked by, an
attempt to make you feel comfortable that sometimes did the opposite. It really wasn’t much of an interview, just a
rubber stamp. R.J. was an adult, probably spent a life in the book business and
now he’s managing the text book department of Barnes & Noble. In the early
80’s, when everyone was still shopping in person and a lot of people shopped at
B&N, he managed about 150 employees, mostly college-age guys, and a few
women. In most of the jobs I had had in
the past, like at The Not-So-Kosher Deli, there were only a handful of
employees, never enough to move beyond the interpersonal to the political. At
Barnes & Noble I learned about work-place politics, mentors and protégés. RJ doled out the work schedule, he could give
out the cushy jobs, like going to the warehouse to sort books. R.J. dictated what aisle you worked in, which could
decide your fate in the store. He was my boss but it went beyond that, looking
back now I can see that it was good if a guy like R.J. liked you.
I finally have a job that’s on the books, so I fill out a W-2 and other payroll information. This
is real. Then R.J. takes me to pick out my “uniform.” Everyone at B&N wears
what amounts to a light jacket. It’s tan, single-breasted with two big pockets
for storing the accoutrements of the job (pens, markers, highlighters, stickers.
You pin your name tag above your heart and you are on your way. Most guys I worked with didn’t like our
uniforms, something to be avoided, to be taken off immediately. I heard people
referring to it as a smock. I didn’t see
it as a smock, I saw it as something akin to a prep school blazer. Putting on
that jacket made me feel important, it confirmed for me that the job
was serious. I worked for years in a neighborhood deli wearing white,
mustard-stained aprons. Now I commute to Manhattan on the subway and I have on
a blazer. I look at all of the other guys and gals, sophisticates, learned
people who know books, people like Franco in Sociology who knows the difference
between sociology and psychology. People like Mitch Paluscek who knew that
George Eliot was a woman and Somserset Maugham was a guy.…I aspired to be one
of them. R.J. puts me in Aisle 2, Psychology. I know a little about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung from Mr. Ronaldson’s Psychology of Literature class. There are 8 aisles in textbooks and each is a fiefdom. The aisles take on the personality of the aisle boss and the personnel under them. Guys were proud of their aisles. They liked to razz each other. And of course with all that testosterone, things were competitive. There was an underlying competition about a lot of things, mostly related to knowledge and speed. Who knows more books? Who knows where things are? Who can help customers the fastest? Who has been working at the store the longest? Who knows the lore? I loved it.
Geoff Waters was the Aisle Chief of Aisle 2, an adult Boy
Scout, the kind of guy who would grow a beard, smoke a pipe and collect comic books. I knew early on that I wanted to be good at
the job. I respected guys that were confident, that knew their stuff. Customer
walks in with a syllabus from their class, especially if it’s a pretty girl, guys
would rush over, a guy like Peter Pabon, my former baseball coach and another mentor from my neighborhood, knew his stuff… “Let me see what you
need here? Oh, you’re taking Professor Johnson’s class…you need Economics by
Samuelson and you’ll need, Hey Jimmy, grab me a copy of….” This stuff impressed
me.
Because I was one of a handful of younger guys, there was only
a few of us still in high school, we were a novelty. In addition to Glen and
Pete Pabon, there were other veteran guys that were nice to me, that took me
under their wing. Like a rookie in a major league dugout, there were veteran
guys to show you how to do the job. Joe Peluso, Geoff’s second in command, Richie “horse legs” Dave took it upon
themselves to show me the ropes. And a long-haired dude, I thought he looked
like a native American from a movie, a drummer in a rock band, Doug Montijo
gave me tips on how to edge a book, how to find a book in the basement, how to
use a pricing gun. I always appreciated that. Maybe it’s because I was a novelty? I was small, even for a high school senior, I might have been 120 pounds? But so many people were really nice to me early on, veteran guys that really could have hazed me, could have given me crap but I escaped all but the most benign razzing. I’m sure guys could see an earnest kid, a newbie I suppose but underneath a street-wise kid. They see themselves in me, remembered someone who had looked out for them, and offered a helping hand when they first started. For the first time in my life I think, I tiptoe into the social pool. I’m intimidated, these people are older, they’re sharp, there was a hierarchy and I knew enough to keep my mouth shut, initially. Along with me, the other high school guys: Jimmy Pisianello, Richie Galtieri, Vinny Gione gravitated to each other. Somebody, I’m going to guess John Carli, saw us hanging together and dubbed us the Kindergarten Krew. A moniker we liked, we took to calling ourselves, the Kindergarten Krew.
With all of this mental stimulation, the barrage of new information, new subway stations, bookstore terminology, New York City lore, it’s no wonder that I gravitate to the familiar. I could be expanding my horizons, hanging out with new people. For the first time in my life, I’m meeting openly gay guys, Rodney from Special Orders, among others. I’m meeting people from other countries, Nadia from South Africa with a great body and that accent. I am meeting people from all over the city, interesting people, and what do I gravitate to? Brooklyn guys, high school guys, just like me.
I learn
stuff, not all connected to the bookstore like: what train line to take to get
to the Garden, how to scalp a ticket to the Ranger game, where to switch to
other train lines to get to the West Side or the East Side. Guys knew about neighborhoods, about ethnicities and back then we
talked about it openly: Pollacks from Greenpoint, Woodside Irish, Puerto Ricans
from East Harlem…
I raced to
work every day. By senior year, in order to graduate John Dewey High School, I only
needed English and Gym. I already had enough credits in Science, Social
Studies, Math but everyone has to sign up for a full slate of classes. I would sign up for multiple English and Gym
classes as well as a sprinkling of Math and Social Studies. In order to work a
long day at the store, I needed my English and Gym classes early in the
morning. If I wind up with English
period J or something, I’m hosed, I’d spend the whole day at school, waiting
for English class so I sign up for multiple classes and just drop the classes
that meet in the afternoon.
The store had its own vocabulary, a lexicon. Some of the
words were particular to the store, to the book business but the words that I
remember, that stayed with me were different. Manny Ortega worked in Sociology/Law, which
was part of text books but it was in the big room right before the “official”
text books department. The guys in Sociology and Law became point men, they
would see the customers coming in before anyone in text books.
“Hammer. Hammer. Aisle 2.”
I keep hearing this, “Hammer. Hammer Aisle 4.”
“Hammer. Hammer at Special Orders.”
It doesn’t take long for brains and testosterone to deduce
that Hammer is B&N code for an attractive girl. It was ingenious. You could
say it anywhere, yell it as loud as you wanted and the customers, especially
the Hammer, were oblivious. Of course as young men in B&N jackets come from
all over the textbooks department, any sharp, pretty girl would realize Hammer
was code.
Some of our terms were not as cleverly disguised. Most of
the guys I hung out with were regular guys. We played roller hockey and
softball and drank beers and talked about New York sports.. This was the early
80’s, and the store was just north of the Village, so we’d see some “characters.”
Every once in a while, we’d have a punk
rocker with a purple Mohawk, leather
jacket with safety pins and you’d hear
Jimmy Angotta yell, “NORMAL.” He’s yelling it right near the guy as he busies
himself with some books. Billy Idol would be shopping for text books, going from aisle
to aisle and every once in a while some clerk from Brooklyn or Queens, like
Billy Goozner is yelling, “NORMAL” right in the guy’s ear. I’m surprised one of
us didn’t get punched.
This was the first job I had that paid me through lunch. Paid to eat lunch, what a concept. If it was nice out, we’d
probably loiter in front of the store, grab a hot dog from a street vendor,
maybe we’d walk over to Paragon Sporting goods to look for a t-shirt or a new
hockey jersey. Most of the time, we’d find a little comfort in the break room;
a decent sized rectangle of a room that held a few couches and a handful of
cafeteria type rectangular tables. Guys would hold court in there. It was a
riot, constant jokes and verbal barbs. I was fastidious in my 15 minutes or
half hour, watching the clock like a stop watch. I remember some of the
veterans, like John Carli, Manny, Joe Rizzo, they didn’t care, they knew it
wasn’t a real job for them in the long run. And besides, what self-respecting
aisle chief is going to mess with any of the elder statesman of the text book
dept? The reigning king of the break room was Don Cilia.
Don was an oversized guy with a big laugh and an even larger
personality. He seemed to be the longest serving B&N employee, one of the
fonts of B&N lore, and politically, he had pull. He could take a lot longer
than a 15 minute break and nobody would say anything to him. It helped that Don
really knew his stuff, when the store was really busy, a guy like Don would
shine. I loved the break room, it was a whole new learning annex. One time, Don
is sitting right by the vending machine with the chips and candy in it and some
deliberate employee has plied his quarters into the machine and is taking just
a little too long in choosing. We are all sitting there chatting and
subconsciously watching this guy torture himself with Hershey Bar or Milky Way. He’s looking and holding his chin, moving
to make the choice, but no, hand back on chin, eventually, it’s too much for
Don. “Fuck it” he reaches up and pulls a random lever and walks away. To this
day, one of the funniest things I have ever seen. “What the fuck Don! I didn’t
want Fritos.”
Early on in my B&N career we’re sitting in the break
room and Don says, “Who’s up for a game a Liars?” I had no idea what he was talking about. But
I quickly learned about Liar’s Poker…
It was an
interesting game of intrigue, feints, bidding, guessing, outsmarting, it was
perfect for a boatload of wise-asses from Brooklyn and Queens. The game rewards
aggression and passivity. In each game there’s really one big winner or one big
loser and everyone else wins or loses the dollar they played with. Everyone has
a dollar bill and the combination of all of the serial numbers on all of the
bills, comprises a poker hand. The idea is to bid the highest possible hand, to
stretch the limits until everyone else decides they can’t outbid you. If you
have the right bid, you win everyone’s dollar, a potential killer payday if 12
or 14 guys are playing. If you bid too high, everyone challenges you and you
lose, you have to pay everyone in the game, a dollar. The early bids are
interesting because you know nobody is going to challenge 3 deuces or 3 8’s so
these bids can be, and often times are, lies. You don’t want to tip your hand
early but as you get to the point where bids are getting higher, that it’s
risky to top a bid, you have to have some 2’s or 8’s in your bill/hand. In a big
group of guys you have the guys that are really in it to just risk the dollar,
to try and win or lose just that dollar. And then you have the guys who are
looking for the big score. As you play, you get to know each other’s
tendencies, like real poker, you might learn a tic or a tell. The game got
really funky the more we played because people started searching out good
bills. Guys would bid phenomenal amounts and you’d think, there’s no way there’s 15 7’s out there but Harry Rivera’s been
pushing 7’s and so has Barone. I don’t have anything that can top that but I
have 3 7’s. Eventually, there is a perfect bid, there’s a bid that if you
get called, you’ll win. If you push too far, you’ll crash and burn. The best
part was the banter, the reactions of guys when they win or lose. The
long-standing memory is of a guy winning, and everyone tossing their money at
him, be it Don Cilia or Gruder or Mike Infurna…”Oh, bullshit! You got a bill
with 7 9’s on it you sand bagging prick?”
And you’d watch and learn about behavior….Guy loses two or three hands,
is he cool? Is he flustered? Does he play scared the next time or try to win
his money back. God it was fun. Sometimes for lunch we’d venture out to the local restaurants. I loved this, any chance to learn the city, my new city. One day we are talking about where to go to lunch, and like a lot of New Yorkers, particularly New Yorkers on a budget, our talk turned to pizza.
Mike Rizzo poses, “You guys want to go down to Ray’s
Pizza?”
“Oh, I don’t know, it’s a walk, and there’s always a line at
Ray’s.”
“It’s a Saturday, how long will the line be?”
A pizzeria with a long line? I’m intrigued… “What’s the big
deal about this pizzeria? Why will there be a line?” And that clinches it, Rizzo says, “HO, HO, Spinner’s never been to Ray’s. You’ve NEVER been to Ray’s? That settles it, we’re going to Ray’s”
I loved learning new stuff about the city, particularly the Village, there
was something cool about 8th Street, Bleecker Street, McDougal
Street. To be carousing the same streets as the Beat Poets, as so many striving
musicians like Bob Dylan, like Springsteen had before, was heady stuff for a Brooklyn kid.
Often times, after we got out at 6:45 (isn’t it funny that 30 years later, I
still remember what time the store closed?) I would walk along 5th
Avenue, towards Washington Square Park. Rather than grab the F at 14th Street, I extended the walk, sometimes all the way down to Broadway-Lafayette, wanting to learn more. I
loved being a commuter, I felt so adult, to be part of the city’s social
fabric. I read so many books during my time at B&N, because of access to books and time on the subway. At that time, everyone was reading thrillers by Robert
Ludlum or mass market paperback fiction books like Lawrence Sanders’ First
Deadly Sin, or the epic Irish saga, Trinity by Leon Uris, Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I wasn't in college yet, but you could say I started my education at Barnes & Noble University.
I would love to implore you to please purchase books at your
local booksellers. If you enjoy browsing in a bookstore, perusing random
shelves for that serendipitous reading adventure, you HAVE to purchase some
books at the store once in a while. Even if it’s cheaper on Amazon, we have to
support our brick & mortar bookstores or those days of lazily enjoying a
few hours of picking up random titles and following a book scent like a
bloodhound will be gone. 
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