Second Edition?

The Boyfriend and I were around Dupont Circle not to long ago, so we decided to venture into one of my favorite used bookstores. Second Story had character. Second Story had spirit. Second Story had delicious piles of books that spilled out onto every horizontal surface. There were shelves and stacks and glorious mountains of reading everywhere.

Second Story had been remodeled!

The piles of books everywhere. Gone. The ephemera and other book related papers, pictures, and doodads adorning the walls. Gone. The addictive smell of used books. Nothing but paint fumes.

I was forlorn and sad and confused and all manner of feelings that I spilled out to The Boyfriend who seemed most amused at my pain. "Put it back!" I wanted to scream. Second Story had been sanitized. It looked like it was catering to those plebes who are afraid to enter a used bookstore with its own system of organization and decoration. Read: My Heaven.

Harumph. Give me my piles, dammit!

I did espy a glimmer. In an unpainted spot of wall was tacked a note, "Place paint here."