Now there’s a phrase I never expected to write. I was only briefly a Strandie—and only at the (now defunct) Fulton St Store.
After graduating from Carleton College, I decided (for lack of anything better to do) to go home to NY, earn some money and go to France on a student visa, through an organization that arranged such things.
I applied for work at temp agencies, at head-hunters (I was—mistakenly, I believe—actually given an interview to *be* a head hunter) even at a French language temp agency, to no avail. So, not long after returning home with a college degree, I found myself applying for retail jobs on Broadway—the same as I would have done as an undergrad. On the 3rd of July, I walked into the Bee’s Knees and asked the manager if they needed help. Reluctantly the manager agreed that they did need help and also reluctantly “hired” me but told me he expected I would never show up*. Immediately afterwards, I walked into the Strand and asked for work (couldn’t be worse than being hired by a guy who was waiting for you to fail/quit). As it turned out, they did need help, so they gave me the test. Well, at the very least I am well-read so I did well enough—better on the French works/authors than those in English. Nancy Bass told me that she had just hired another guy but “We need someone here and someone at the Fulton St Store. I told him to go down there. Why don’t you go too, and whoever the manager prefers can work there and the other one can work here.”
A word about the Fulton St Strand—there had been a tiny little Strand by South St Seaport for quite some time. It was dark and not much bigger than some of the “museums” which were really souvenir shops dressed up by an entrance fee. When I got back to NY I had been to South St. Seaport and had gone looking for this mini-Strand amongst the outlet shops and tourist traps (for the purpose of book-purchasing) only to discover it had move to much nicer, airer digs on Fulton St. So I knew where the Fulton St Strand was (even though I’d seen it for the first time a week ago.) It was so airy, and so much less cramped than the regular Strand that I even thought it might even be air-conditioned (I was wrong.)
The next day—July 4th—I showed up at the door of the Fulton St store with the staff right before opening hours. I was wearing a dress I had borrowed of my sister—not the suit jacket and skirt combo I normally had for interviews, but a step up from the t-shirts and jean shorts worn by the staff standing outside with bagels and coffees in their hands.
The manager of the Fulton St Strand was unaware of Nancy’s plans. I explained. “Well that’s rather..Machiavellian. She wants you both to come here. On the 4th of July and compete against each other?” I got the job. I was working in bag check when my competitor showed up.**
I was hired as a cashier, which left me plenty of time for surreptitiously reading books behind the counter, which is nice work if you can get it—even at minimum wage. After going to school in the mid-west for 4 years, I couldn’t *not* be polite and so I got a raise after my first week ($.25 more an hour!) for my politesse.
The Strand is named after the Strand in London, but as I got to know the other people who worked there—not just in the outlet where I worked, but after going to the main store to pick from the stacks for overtime in December I felt that the name was fitting from the perspective of the employees—a strand—as in the shore or sandbar where one might wash up for a time.
My colleagues included playwrights, poets, anarchist Buddhist managers, artists and (it was rumored)Ca guy who had been big in real estate until he threw a client through a window. I met a man whose cat had saved him from a burglar and a woman who had contacts in Paris (met through the same program I was going to use to get a visa.)
However, the Fulton St store where I worked was not the 12th St Strand. We did not have rare books. We mostly had discount versions of Whatever Was most Popular (Angela’s Ashes and Underboss by Sammy The Bull Gravano) for the Wall St crowd to buy on their lunch breaks, as well as dollar carts out front and a dollar table in back. We also had Advanced Readers Copies (ARCs)—books given to reviewers and booksellers not intended for resale (which many reviewers did sell to the Strand, clearly) but not as big a collection as the 12th St store—although I did find a copy of Les Trois Mousquetaires in French ( I read it while sitting behind the counter.)
As far as we knew this store—on paper—was basically a warehouse from which (bonus!) the Strand occasionally sold books. At the time the Strand was the biggest used bookstore in the world. However, we knew that most of the trade came from mail order sales (I’m not even sure the Strand had a website yet.)
We thought that the Bass family owned the building on 12th St along with—who knows what other real estate in NYC.
As I was trying to save up money to go abroad, I took overtime in December on my days off to pick from the upper floors of the 12th St store. This—I was told—was where they kept the real weirdos. Not just the anarchists and the people who wrote “Puddin Tane” on their name badges (so that when the customers complained about them the management could say “we don’t have any employees named “Puddin Tane.” Yes, that happened.)
“When you get there—there’s going to be a guy with black hair that will stare at you. You can explain that you’re there to pick for the Fulton St. store. And he will continue to stare at you” was what the manager said before I went out to the warehouse for the first time. This was an accurate description of my reception there.
Not unlike the bookstore downstairs, or downtown, each area had a custodian in charge. They were almost all young men. Most of them were listening to a Walkman. Every single one of them was polite to me and asked me to let him know if there was something I couldn’t find. Most of them were young dudes, but even the elderly guy with long hair (who I was told was a junkie and didn’t normally speak to women) was helpful.
I am shocked that the Strand is in bad way—we always assumed that the Bass family had all kinds of resources—how could this be. But of course, I worked there in the late 90s, and my sister worked there in the early aughties. The Strand at the time did a lot of mail order business. And these days, when one wants to order a book one doesn’t think of the Strand—one thinks of Amazon. I suspect this is the problem (along with the fact that the other money maker—rare book sales—is kind of an “in person” transaction.)
When I think of this threat, it is not the customers that I worry about, or even the demise of another NY institution. I’m thinking of the Strandies—the poets and junkies and the artists and the bibliophiles and the merely confused who washed up on the shore of the Strand and found they could stay there. I’m thinking of my sister—who went to baking school while working as a paperback sorter, of her leftist (ex) boyfriend, of the ex-tennis pro who I worked with, and the guy who had one more college class to take before he graduated, and the poet and the manager that had dumplings every Sunday while arguing in a Beatrice and Benedict fashion. I’m thinking of a place that people can come and work and *be* without having to put a tie on or makeup and heels. It doesn’t pay well, but you’re allowed to be an intelligent person without having to catch the early train (boat) in clothes that must be dry cleaned only to be admonished by a manager to “think outside the box.”
* To be fair, I did not—having been hired by the Strand
**Apparently after being told to report to 12th St, he showed up the next morning, clocked out at lunch and was never heard from again
