Communist bookstore in Cleveland - how does it stay in business?

[KidCharlemagne]

It’s actually a front for a vast right wing conspiracy.

[Kalhoun]

@elmwood

Could that explain other niche bookstore genres I’ve come across fairly often, like places specializing in mystery or horror books, or lesbian books?

…or (shudder!) Christian reading rooms???

[vanilla]

@Sternvogel

Incidentally, the Clevelander* interested in spending the day running the gamut of fringe politics could, at one time, spend an hour or so at Revolution Books, then head to the West Side and check out the headquarters of the United White People’s Party. The headquarters featured a sign extolling GOD, COUNTRY, and RACE. Above each of these words were, respectively, a picture of a cross, an American flag, and a swastika.

• well, the white Clevelander, anyway

Where on earth on the west side is this place?
:eek:

[mhendo]

@vanilla

Its nice to see posts by some locals.

They even have a sense of humor.
Awhile back they had a sign on the window saying Mao more than ever.

Any visitors to Cleveland (Hts.) are well advised to visit this wonderful street.
I used to live there and its diverse, and interesting.
Tommys restuarant has been voted best for years, ad you can’t miss with Mac’s Backs paperbacks.

At the very least, it’s nice to know that Cleveland isn’t just the white-bread hell portrayed in the Drew Carey Show, or the bottle-throwing idiocy of Browns fans.

When i lived in Vancouver, there was a bookstore called Spartacus on the western fringe of downtown on Hastings St., which was similar to the store described in the OP.

I saw “was” because, as i just found out on their website, the building burned to the ground on April 25th of this year, thus closing down “North America’s oldest collectively-run, non-profit bookstore.” Police say the fire was deliberately set.

This is a real shame, because i used to love Spartacus. They sold a selection of old left, Marxist stuff, but they also had heaps of new left, socialist, anarchist, feminist, situationist, and just about every other left-wing “ist” literature. It was also a great space just to hang out; no-one minded if you picked up a book or a magazine and just sat down on a couch to read for a while.

In the process, you could avoid people like DougC who apparently believe that gay and lesbian issues don’t qualify as a real topic of study, who apparently believe that bookstores need to be populated by doctors and lawyers, and who mistake institutional analysis for tin-foil-hat conspiracy theories.

[Snooooopy]

@rjung

Or maybe it’s just a front for COBRA.

If you try to shoplift there, Storm Shadow sneaks up behind you and lops your head off.

[GargoyleWB]

We have a political fringe store like that in Seattle. I think what keeps these stores in business is that they are small and independent, and as such they often carry obscure and interesting independent small-run publishers from a wide variety of subjects. For authors, poets, beginning novelists, and publishers that don’t have the swing to get on the shelves of Barnes and Noble, these small bookstores are a godsend.

Don’t let the “Neon Lenin” or “Silhoutte of Machine-gun totin’ Rasta” in the shop window keep you from exploring, you can find some great gems in these places…