If I go to book things, be like, oh, you're the secret bookstore guy, give me a card.
I said, well, I don't have a card, I'm the secret bookstore guy, it would be ridiculous
to have a card.
My name is Michael Seidenberg, we're in my bookshop, Brazenhead Books, I'm a bookseller,
I've been a bookseller for decades.
This is the latest incarnation of my shop.
It is a second-hand bookshop in every way, but it's not on the street and it's not open
to the public as such, it's not legal, so that's why it has to be hidden.
It's a residence and it can't be identified for that reason, but because it's an inexpensive
rent, I can afford to do what I would do if I could have a bookshop.
The second-hand bookshops have been banished from the city, there's no place for them.
When people say, oh, is Barnes and Noble, put you out, no, no, real estate put me out.
It's changed so much for me, I could have a bookshop, when rents went crazy I had to
sell it, book fairs, or sell it on the street, there were all ways that were not exactly
what I wanted to do, I had to think of a third way, and this is the best way.
This would not have been my ideal though, I wouldn't have thought I want to have a bookshop
in a location that no one knows about, but once I did it, it just seemed realer than
almost everything else.
It's a continuation of just me being a bookseller the way I want to be.
I don't know if it's my familiarity with failure, but I find ways to survive without
it making enough money to be what you would call a successful business.
If it's all about money, there's just better things to sell.
It's a self-crack, that's a much better business.
I don't feel like, oh I'm going to do this, and now everyone's going to read older books
and forgotten authors.
It's a losing battle, we've lost.
I just want to do as much as I can.
What part of the city is the bookshop, how secretive do you get?
It is a funny thing, because my name is known, and my name is in the phone book, anyone can
call me, but of course in this age of superintelligence no one has a phone book.
We thought that was pretty shocking that I was hiding in plain sight.
Come find me, visit me, and I'm yours.
