"...folded paper"

One of my dreams has always been to open a little book store. Granted in this environment of the deliberate destruction of these by technology predatory capital, and general indifference. Despite that I still keep the dream.

I'd 'still' do it if I could. My hood has everything a working-class area needs. Bodegas church food pantries Social Security offices handy subway lines trigger happy cops...though oddly not that much violent crime. Almost none compared to the old days.
However, the cops are still trigger happy...tradition.

We have dozens of liquor stores too.

However, no book stores. ...not one. Well not counting the religious Botanica shops. These where you can get assorted religious scribblings, and near life sized plaster statues of the saint of you choice.
Mostly really big Jebus icons covered in blood from the scourging.
These are all over the place.
I prefer the Virgin Mary items...they're less dramatic. One doesn't get the feeling she was just shot, and or hacked by looking at her.

Folks need, and believe in weird stuff.

About that store I had in mind. I'd still do it. If only to see what would happen if one showed up. Showed up in a pre-gentrified way.

There's plenty of Book Shoppe's in the re-whited hoods of my part of town. That, and very high-priced health food supermarkets yoga studios. Also, white only store front pre-schools, and better services...cops' sanitation like that.

So I'd like to do a social experiment of a little book shop for real people. I might make a go having Zero competition. Yeah, there's the local Library however it's a ghost of what it was.
Just a few stacks a couple of computers. A pissed off bored uninterested civil service staff, and almost no one sitting, and reading...other than a few old folks like me.

Okay so far this post is a tale of urban horror, and almost makes you 'want' gentrification. Which I would if it weren't so much like what happened to the Plains Natives. In our case the settlers would be sitting over our bones eating tofu ice cream, and reading Proust.

Almost forgot...why I love the idea of a book store. Obviously because I love to bleeping read. I write draw, and used to publish my own books. Hand printing binding all that neat smarty pants crap. Back in the day. I was in with a whole gleeful deranged crowd that did just that.

We self-styled ourselves the "Micro-Press" movement. This just to generally have fun, and in reaction to the dreary hunting to sell movie rights bunch from of the "small press".
Before the internet folks used to read. That, and publish their dreams on office copiers offset presses hand cranked mimeo even carbon stencil. The latter like Soviet era dissidents. We had a fucking ball.

The memory of that happy noise stays with me as does the idea we all had of opening a book store. However as happens life, and responsibilities took over. I was just starting as a broadcast engineer. My comrades we also just beginning careers, and families. That, and so very many were lost in the AIDS pandemic...the rest is postponed history.

40+ plus years later the idea still swims drifts in the currents of my dreams. Yeah, a damned bookstore in the heart of a hood where they think no one would bother to even look at a book. I'd put it right between the liquor store, and the barber shop.
..cross over traffic.

The place would only need a core of 50 regular customers to pay the rent...so word of mouth, and weirdness of design might work.

Just 50 or so secret Dreamers.

"Uncle Sydney's Shop of Bewildered Wonderments"...and, "Curiosities"

Has possibilities.