Imagine turning back the clock 20 years to a time when small businesses still thrived on the Upper West Side, people read books printed on paper, and your computer said “You’ve Got Mail” when someone emailed you.
Book Culture is doing just that with a new sign in the store window it plans to take over on Columbus Avenue between 81st and 82nd street.
The sign says:
“Dear New York,
You’ve Got Mail
…Again.
20 years ago, an independent bookstore was forced from this space by a retail giant, which many say partly inspired the movie You’ve Got Mail, starring meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. This fall, the story continues…”
The bookstore forced out of 20 years ago was Endicott Booksellers, which closed in 1995, and the retail giant is Barnes & Noble. The New Yorker visited Endicott when it was about to close:
“There are three words for why we’re going under, and the words are ‘Barnes & Noble,’” the owner of Endicott for the past fourteen years, Encarnita Quinlan, said. According to Quinlan, the advent two years ago of the Barnes & Noble “superstore” a couple of blocks west, on Broadway, wiped out a pattern of steady growth at Endicott and cut her sales by as much as forty per cent. “The neighborhood is now filled with Filene’s Basement, Today’s Man, Barnes & Noble,” Stuart Bernstein, Quinlan’s buyer, said. “Soon it will be like the shopping mall I grew up with.”
If only Nora Ephron were still alive to write You’ve Got Mail 2: You’ve Got a Tweet. (Okay, that was weak. If you can think of a better sequel title, let us know in the comments.)
One more fun fact: The Shop Around the Corner from You’ve Got Mail is now a laundromat.
Thanks to Emily Baer for the photos of Book Culture, and Ittai for the Endicott boomark.
Sequel: “You’ve Got Mail 2: Dawn of The Amazon Drones.”
Sequel: “You’ve Got Mail 2: About Twenty Years Latter
Title:
“You’ve Got Mail, *Too*: The Divorce Papers”
“You’ve Got Mail 2: B&N is Out of Business and The Dog Died”
Bruce Bernstein for the win!
Barnes and Noble was not the reason for the orginal bookstore to go out of business, it was that people in the neighborhood chose to shop there and not continue to shop at the small store. If you want to support local, small business, you have to be prepared to spend your money at them and not in the chain stores.
so true MJB.
consider what happened to B & N by the internet. I recall the cries when the 66th street Barnes and Noble closed. As if the same folks didn’t call them the evil empire only a decade before.
That said, best of luck on the new venture!
hopefully they will find their niche.
Re: ““There are three words for why we’re going under, and the words are ‘Barnes & Noble,’”
That’s only TWO words!
The “&” symbol (ampersand) is NOT a word.
You’ve Got Mail 2: Electric Boogaloo
It is a dry cleaner!
Couple of reasons the Endicott might have closed (besides Barnes & Noble) were an unfriendly group of sales personnel, an awful, though attractive, use of space, and no real connect to the community. In fact the arrival of Barnes & Noble was exciting in many ways. Hope the new bookstore will be a nicer place to visit.
I don’t remember the Today’s Man store. Did it really ruin the neighborhood?
Now of course Barnes & Noble was considered the underdog.