If you’re looking for vintage literature, belabored Barbra Streisand hits or even some before-porn-was-really-trashy Playboys from the seventies, spare Borders and shimmy on down to Shake, Rattle & Read, 4812 N. Broadway St., in the Uptown neighborhood.
Within the narrow, high-ceilinged store exists the same fusion of modern and marvelously antiquated. Though it takes a bit of hunting through the books stacked vertically in piles throughout the store and on very high bookcases (don’t worry, there’s a ladder), discerning bibliophiles should be able to locate anything from a 1960s biography of Scott before-he-added-the-“F”-in-front-of-his-name Fitzgerald to university harlequin characters in “Campus Nymphs.”
Like any other bookstore intent on making money, the mainstream is plentiful as well. A Dr. Atkins diet book is propped up against a Duke Ellington album in the front window, for starters. But don’t worry — there is neither an Oprah’s Book Club section nor a bestseller banquet table. When a customer came in requesting Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code,” an employee had to move a stack of books (including the Bible, ironically) to access the plastic-wrapped edition. Don’t always expect mainstream prices though: “The Da Vinci Code” had an orange-sticker price of $10 less than the normal list price of $24.95.
What sets Shake, Rattle & Read apart from other used bookstores is not its selection of tattered Dostoyevsky, though. The store boasts an intense magazine collection — last month’s Esquire sat in a box below one from the ’60s. Rare magazines are displayed as posters on the wall, often sold for more than $10 dollars an issue. And for the neo-hippie, back issues of Evergreen Magazine from the ’60s could be your new hipster manifesto. Or for those feeling Hunter S. Thompson nostalgia — an original edition of the “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” poster is available for $30.
And don’t forget to peruse the vast record collection. Or if you’ve moved on from your record player to your walkman, try the cassette wall. Or for the really tech-savvy, pick up a copy of “Goosebumps,” among other vintage VCR valuables.
Shake, Rattle & Read is open from 12 to 6 p.m. every day.
— Kurt Soller
