Bibliophiles keep Westsider Books open for business in a changing retail climate

Westsider Books has the musty smell and sense of disarray that a used book store should have. Books pile high in every corner, even crowding the narrow staircase to the second floor. For owner Dorian Thornley, his store is the only game in town, and holds the unofficial title of the last used bookstore on the Upper West Side.

Thornley, originally from Blackpool, England, sits behind a desk on the second floor of the shop, peering at his computer through black-rimmed glasses. Business continues as usual at the moment, but he gives the publishing industry five years before the printing of new books comes to an end. At that point, he figures, physical books will become more of a novelty item than a means of reading.

“You can’t fight the future,” Thornley said. “What am I supposed to do—bomb the Kindle factory?”

Westsider Books began as a wheelbarrow full of used books for sale, later moving to a tiny storefront on Broadway between 80th and 81st streets. Thornley was originally an employee at the store, then known as Gryphon Books, and he eventually bought it with his business partner, Bryan Gonzalez, in 2002. Gonzalez and Thornley own both Westsider Books and Westsider Records, located eight blocks further downtown.

The Upper West Side used to be full of used-book stores, Thornley recalls. But today, their store is such an anomaly that Woody Allen chose Westsider Books as a setting for his newest movie, Fading Gigolo, due out in theaters later this year.

When not being used as a movie set, the store is filled with bibliophiles, some of whom come in twice a day. For diehard customers, Thornley says buying books is an addiction. Even so, the Upper West Side has changed a lot since the store opened 40 years ago, and his clientele is simultaneously more affluent and less academic.

Even newcomers are impressed with the tiny shop. One first-time customer, Mike Higgins, 30, whispered “wow,” as he peered up at the rickety ladder that scaled the towering bookshelves.
“They’ve never seen a bookstore like this before. We’re celebrated for being a holdout,” Thornley said. “We’re getting older, and the customers are getting younger.”

It should go without saying that you probably won’t find the latest bestseller at Westsider.

“We like to think we have a good selection of books here,” Thornley said. “No one raving into a cellphone, no lowbrow dreck.”

Instead, the shelves are filled with unusual books from people’s basements and attics, or even suitcases, collected over interesting, far-flung lifetimes. John Springs, an elderly man with a gray beard and gap-toothed grin, lugs a ragged suitcase full of paperbacks into the shop. He is a regular bookseller at Westsider, and claims to have once been a bestselling author.

“If you just come here, you’ll see something,” Springs said. “It’s real comfortable; they know where everything is.”

But being a book expert is not enough. Thornley says he tries to keep his store relevant by updating Westsider’s Facebook page and responding to Yelp reviews. What really keeps the bookstore running though, he says, is the location: on a main thoroughfare and right near the 79th Street subway stop. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that the Barnes & Noble across the street closed a couple of years ago.

“It’s a vocation. It chooses you; you don’t choose it,” Thornley said. “I’m selling books; what could be better than that?”

“Merry Christmas,” I casually wished a guy I’d seen working out at my gym in Prospect Heights as he passed me in the locker room. He stopped with a quizzical look on his face.

“Err, bro, I’m Jewish,” he said.

“Oh, sorry,” I mumbled, shocked. This was the first time in my life I’d been reprimanded for trying to be nice. As if to dispel any hardcore religious significance he may have perceived in my seasonal greeting, I told him that I was not a Christian either, but a Hindu.

At least Hanukkah was on the radar in New York. The gym I attended had both a Menorah and a Christmas tree. As a Hindu, I was disappointed that Diwali didn’t even get a mention outside the Indian community, falling marginally outside the festive season. I didn’t take it personally, but perhaps I should have. I’d moved to the States from my native England a year prior to the gym incident and quickly realized that part of being an American was choosing your spiritual side and sticking to it. A Hindu wishing a Jew a Happy Noel was clearly politically incorrect.

My wife, a Catholic from Trinidad, had both Christian and Hindu relatives, and from an early age was raised to celebrate all her island’s diverse cultures. She’d been fairly relaxed about marrying someone outside her faith. We had a Hindu wedding ceremony in Danbury, Conn. But when we looked for a church in New York to allow us to have a “blessing of the rings,” we were turned down by several before finding a liberal denomination in Greenwich Village. Would my wife become influenced by U.S. culture and pick her side, too? What about our kids? With the unrelenting marketing muscle that St. Nick wields over other religions in the States, I could imagine all my family joining forces with him and his throng, leaving me a lonely, isolated Hindu. I’d be banished to the outer fringes of ragtag global religions along with Sikhs, Buddhists and Muslims, a kind of shantytown outside the Emerald City of Christianity. Maybe that was why the Jewish guy at the gym reacted so forcefully when I misnamed his holiday. I wondered if Jews feel that they are one overly zealous right-wing Christian president away from joining the rest of us in America’s religious soup kitchen of homeless faiths.

Now I understand the delicate protocol of correctly naming each person’s specific religious celebration. In England, wishing someone a Merry Christmas did not connote a solemn remembrance of three kings being led by a star, a stable and a virgin birth. If anything, it means going down to the pub, eating lots of food, opening presents and time off work. A joke I remember from my childhood, told annually by one of my friend’s parents, was, “The problem with Christmas is that they always have to bring religion into it.”

The U.K. has its issues and may be a long way off from electing a non-white prime minister, but it is a largely secular country. The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, is an atheist, and the leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband, is Jewish (an unheard of combination in the U.S.), and Christmas describes a season more than a religious observance.

My Hindu family, along with my relatives, partook in the seasonal activities of decorating a tree, opening presents and eating a traditional turkey dinner while the Queen gave her annual speech, as did most of England’s multicultural society. It never occurred to us to do otherwise.

When it comes to the festive season, Britain, along with most of Europe, just doesn’t take things that seriously. It’s why many American far-right Christian firebrands believe it’s a continent of socialist sinners. I prefer to see it as a spiritually tolerant place that has enough to worry about without bringing religion into the mix to complicate matters further.

With that said, just in case, I wish you Happy Holidays.

By Jeff Vasishta

Diwali Lights. Photo via Flickr/Swami Stream.

Diwali season is upon us again. It is the Indian fall festival of lights, occurring this year on November 13th-17th. Many New Yorkers familiar with Yom Kippur, Columbus Day or Martin Luther King Day are still in the dark about Diwali and its significance, despite it being granted a suspended parking rules day in 2005. Although New York based-Indians contribute a vital and visible component to the Big Apple’s economy, it is perhaps their lack of mainstream celebrity status which has resulted in many NYC residents’ ignorance when it come to Diwali. Regardless of the relatively recent fame of Padma Lakshmi, Freeda Pinto, Meera Nair, Mindy Kaling and others, they hardly stack up in name recognition to Jay-Z, J-Lo, Brad, Angelina and their ilk. Without Diwali celebrations featured in the pages of of US Weekly and on TV shows like Extra, it would barely occupy its fringe position in the American consciousness.

This has frustrated me since I first moved to New York from London in 1993, as a music journalist writing predominantly about R&B. There were no other Indians in my profession. In England, where the Indian populous is far more established than in the U.S. (the Indian take-out restaurant in the UK is more popular than McDonalds), Diwali is widely recognized and accepted, particularly in cities such as London, Birmingham and Manchester. My family celebrated Diwali with other local Indians in community halls specially rented for the occasion. London hosts an annual Diwali festival in Trafalgar Square. It’s a big deal in a country where British Indians enjoy a far more visible role in the nation’s mainstream culture than they do in New York.

The Bollywood film industry revels in its rabid celebrity culture. In the U.S., however, famous homegrown Indians are thin on the ground. In 2009, British Indian pop singer Jay Sean was the first Indian to top the Billboard charts with the song “Down”. He hasn’t been able to capitalize on that success and become a widely recognized name. It’s not inconceivable that one day that there may be an Indian Katy Perry, Derek Jeter or Matt Damon, but it may not happen anytime soon. The three most direct paths to celebrity status – sports, music and film – are hardly championed by hard working Indian immigrants in the U.S., who, understandably, mostly promote academic success over anything else.

India’s Asian partner in the emergent global economy and American geekdom, China, has by far surpassed it in sports. First former NY Knick Jeremy Lin became a bonafide Chinese American basketball star and then China cemented their place as a world sporting power at the London Olympics. “Our mediocrity is there for all to see” read the headline in Delhi’s Mail Today during the games. By any measure, their total of one silver and three bronze medals from a nation of 1.2 billion people was a paltry showing and highlighted just how far the country has to go to compete with other nations a fraction of their size.

India achieved one notable celebrity first this year that resonated in certain quarters of the U.S. entertainment industry. Bollywood actress Sherlyn Chopra became the first Indian to appear nude in Playboy. But alas, organizers were not in a rush to book her to turn on the lights at the South Street Seaport Diwali Festival.

Until the Indian community has iconic pop culture figures recognized by all Americans, to draw attention to their traditions, Diwali will be nothing more than an excuse for New Yorkers not to have to get up in the morning and move their cars.

The artisan flea market is showing the game on a large screen with soccer demos, free snacks and free Hawaiian Shaved Ice for the kids.

Money raised goes towards P.S. 63.

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