Busboys & Poets

Finding good food that is worth eating is sometimes difficult. There is a McDonalds on the corner of every block with a Starbucks placed strategically in the middle. It’s hard to get a fresh perspective on food when your options are limited to what is available, convenient, and mass-produced.

Although living one’s life in the “gastronomic doldrums” is less than desirable, it is far more tragic to be deprived of intellectual stimuli from a wide variety of views and sources. There is no doubt that the mega-bookstores that have become dominant in the past decade have contributed to the limited options available to readers.

Luckily, Washington area residents have an alternative: the Busboys and Poets Bookstore. This nonconformist bookstore happily offers nontraditional books, such as those published by AK Press. The Oakland, California-based publisher/distributor was founded in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1990 and opened their U.S. branch in 1994. During their eighteen years in the publishing business, AK Press has become an ultimate authority on all anarchist books, CDs, and DVDs. Does that last sentence sound like an oxymoron?

Regardless, if you’re craving something different, you can find many AK Press items at both the DC and the Virginia locations of the Busboys and Poets Bookstores. In a recent interview with Publishers Weekly, Don Allen, General Manager of the DC Busboys and Poets, noted that some of the best sellers from AK Press include a three-DVD set on the Black Panthers, What We Want, What We Believe and several of AK Press’s vegan cookbooks.

It’s no secret: every recent utterance, and every distant association, of Busboys and Poets’ favorite Presidential candidate is being parsed to the point of absurdity by his opponents, both Democratic and Republican.

Hendrik Hertzberg, in the new New Yorker, speaks to the absurdity surrounding the recent Philadelphia debate:

In the seven weeks since the previous Clinton-Obama debate, the death toll of American troops in Iraq had reached four thousand; the President had admitted that his “national-security team,” including the Vice-President, had met regularly in the White House to approve the torture of prisoners; house repossessions topped fifty thousand per month and unemployment topped five per cent; and the poll-measured proportion of Americans who believe that “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track” hit eighty-one per cent, a record.

In other words, only an out-of-touch elitist could call someone an out-of-touch elitist for observing that almost everyone has a reason to be bitter about the shape of national politics.

The Pennsylvania primary holds the potential to release us from at least one aspect of this madness: if Obama finishes within a single-digit margin of Clinton tonight, Stephanopoulos and his peers among the punditry might finally acknowledge that this race is between Obama and McCain, between responsible policies and destructive delusion. Hertzberg goes on to dream:

The battle might even be about ideas.

Have you been living in the Washington, D.C., area long enough that your first reaction to such a statement is “yeah, right”?

Or do you perceive a change in the wind?

We’ll be watching tonight’s events with rapt attention at the Busboys and Poets’ Shirlington, VA, location. It’ll be a community of Obama supporters, political activists, and just plain political junkies, gathered around a big screen and enjoying the drink specials and free wi-fi.

Details are here, courtesy of MyBarrackObama:

Join your friends at Busboys and Poets as we anticipate the PA returns! 7PM-till the last vote is counted! Drink Specials throughout the night. The returns will be shown on our Big Screen Projector and in our bar.

Join us!

Literacy theorists, child educators, and all-around bloggers, take note: there’s a great new blog on our radar called For the Babies…

Written by Leensa Fufa, the blog has been going since February. It’s about, well, literacy theory, child education, and all-around blogging. An excerpt:

My fondest memory of literacy involves road trips with my sister and her godmother. My sister and I memorized Shel Silverstein poems to pass the time… and earn money! My sister’s godmother was very generous and I still have Tree House memorized. Now I recite it to my students.

Leensa writes about an experience perusing the aisles at the Busboys and Poets store, here:

I love this Busboys & Poets Books! Although small and somewhat crowded, I find its collection of books rich and refined. The affiliation with Teaching for Change ensures thoughtful and deliberate selection of books.

Leensa also admits to a tendency that’s becoming increasingly dominant among even the most avid of book-lovers: going to the bookstore to look for interesting titles, then picking up one’s selections from Amazon for the sake of economy.

Hey, that’s the modern world. The number of viable, community-oriented bookstores decreases by the year, as national and international retailers consolidate their hold on the market. Choice increases but it comes with a price.

At Busboys and Poets, we remain a vital space, but it would be much more an uphill struggle in such an environment if we strove to exist as a bookstore alone. So we have the restaurant; we have visiting authors; we have the Langston Room.

It’s a privilege to be able to play host to the vibrant community of writers, poets, activists, educators, and literary enthusiasts here in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area. There is truly a great movement underway, and what it needs to grow is community.

So please do come down to spend some time with us. Browse the shelves, view a reading, maybe sample a delicious panini– and also, for community’s sake, won’t you please consider buying a book?