Unlike most years, I spent the remainder of the weekend with my kids in Brooklyn, and having a great time eating at local restaurants, and visiting the San Gennaro festival in Little Italy. I hadn't been to that in many years. We had lunch at a great Cambodian restaurant right in the middle of Littel Italy.
We also took the newish NYC Ferries all around Brooklyn, Manhattan, and even headed out to the Rockaways and the boardwalk. The ferries are the best deal in NYC, only $2.75 for wonderful views of NYC from the water. It isn't the Circle Line, but for the money, it can't be beaten. It was also interesting seeing all of the Hasidic Jews about, walking around with their families on the High Holidays on Shabbat on the Greenpoint waterfront with their huge round beaver hats, and the whole family beautifully but extremely conservatively dressed.
Although I didn't really have as much time as I would have liked at the NYABF, I did have a good time talking to friends like Paul Soullelis, Johanna Drucker, Hedi Kyle, Chantal Zakari and Mike Mandel, all of whom have new books out. It was also great to see Bill Burke, who I hadn't seen in many years, perhaps even since I worked on the film stripping and platemaking on his book I want to take picture in the 1980s, at Nexus Press.
I did see some interesting new books: Lisa at Siglio Press is coming out with a new book on Dick Higgins called Intermedia, Fluxus and Something Else Press, selected writings edited by Steve Clay and Ken Friedman.
I told her some of the stories about living next door to Dick and Allison for 15 years as their neighbor in Barrytown, NY. (Among other things, I was Dick's go-to Apple Mac Computer tech trouble-shooter person, but not because I especially wanted to.)
Some other books that I liked were Kodaji Press' In Search of Frankenstein – Mary Shelley's Nightmare by Chloe Dewe Mathews. (Last year was the bicentennial of Mary Sheely's writing of Frankenstein, which she did in a cabin at the foot of a Swiss glacier.) The book is luscious and features a facsimile of Sheely's original manuscript, interspersed with views of the glaciers which she would have looked out at when she was writing it.
I often buy books from Kodaji, one of the more interesting European presses, and have become friends with the proprietor, Winfried Heininger.
People know Dashwood Books as a place to purchase rare and out-of-print photo books, but also hard-to-find Japanese photobooks, a whole genre to its own. Their place on Bond St. in Manhattan is a photo-book lovers paradise. In the last 10 years, they have moved into also publishing photobooks, though their list is not long. This year they published a great book called Khichdi -Kitchari, by Nick Sethi.
The book is interesting because although it has (currently) hip details like an exposed Smythe-sewn spine, the page edges are sprayed with red paint, and the book has a slightly funky hand-made Indian look to it, which was where it was produced.
This year I had the fewest books ever to haul back to Tucson. This is probably a good thing since my upcoming official status as "retired" means no more regular paycheck, and I will need to be much more careful with my book expenditures.
