On Todd’s letter, and on Atomic Books and Aquarius Records.
New York City
December 1, 2000
Dear Readers,
Today’s letter comes from Todd Pruzan, an editor at Inside.com‘s new print magazine, which is also called Inside. He covers the media, like lush wall-to-wall broadloom covers the floor. His letter today is about his new apartment, into which he moves this weekend.
Speaking of covering the media, a link on Jim Romenesko’s media weblog brought thenews this week that Atomic Books in Baltimore, one of the first bookstores to carry Open Letters as a print magazine, is closing up shop soon, a victim of changing traffic patterns and, of course, the Internet. We are sorry to see it go.
A slim ray of hope in the cloud of despair that is the news from Maryland comes from San Francisco, where Open Letters is now being sold, on paper, atAquarius Records, which Windy, the owner, describes as:
the oldest independent record shop in San Francisco. This year [Windy writes] we celebrated its 30th birthday. The store has always championed underappreciated music — it was THE punk store in the 70s and 80s — Elvis Costello played in-store appearances, one of The Residents worked the counter, we opened at midnight the morning Never Mind the Bollocks came out. In my more recent ten years of working here, music has gotten even more exciting. I’ve made it a point to carry on the tradition. We only stock music we LOVE, everything from experimental electronica to Finnish minimalism to krautrock to gamelan to postrock and dub. Whew. And now, I’m ever so happy to be carrying the Open Letters weekly edition.
Coincidentally, Aquarius was the first store I visited when I arrived in San Francisco last April: I had seen a poster on a wall in the Mission for a new issue of the legendary and infrequently published zine Scam, and stopped by Aquarius to pick it up. Things have come full circle, or something.
For more information on our bookstore deal, please see this page; for information on subscriptions, please gohere - this week’s PDF goes out to subscribers early Sunday morning, just as Todd gets that final box inside his new apartment.
Yours truly,
