Bookstore Yard Sale Mon., April 27 Noon-5 pm

Literary posters, memorabilia, chairs, office & retail items for book nuts, teachers, school librarians & YOU. Pick up storage units, displays, posters, file cabinets, folding chairs, cube refrigerator, a table and a bank safe will be out on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. We’ll have a couple computer desks, school locker unit, lots of baskets, a kitchen cabinet on casters and lots more. You may need to knock on the door, but stop by. Please plan to pay cash for these items. Check our events page for more details.

If you cannot make it by 5 pm, please call 301-779-9300 to arrange later pick-up.

If you have memories of Vertigo Books from Dupont Circle days or here in College Park, please stop in and share them by writing in our memory book at the front counter. We’d appreciate it. If you have any photos of Vertigo Books events, please send them to staffATvertigo-books.com.

Goodbye: We are Closing

Hello-

After seventeen and half years, the time has come. Curtains down and goodbye–in two weeks Vertigo Books will close.
Starting today, EVERYTHING IN THE STORE IS 20% OFF. If you’ve been eyeing that special something, come in and grab it now, before someone else does. And our new rules for the next couple weeks: no checks, no returns and no exchanges. Please note: we will be closed Easter Sunday, April 12, our usual hours will resume Monday
 
Why are we closing? There are many reasons, but basically, not enough people buy books here.
 
We have many loyal customers, just not enough of them, and our cloning experiments have not yielded satisfactory results. And way too many people (not you, but someone you know) are buying their books at Amazon. We’ll spare you the inside baseball stuff about the near monopolistic force Amazon has become in the industry. You can also skip to the party info at the end if you like.
 
Connecting the Dots
As we have said before, your shopping dollars help create the community you want to live in. For every $10 you spend at locally-owned businesses, $4.50 stays in our community. The math is simple and compelling:
Vertigo Books $4.50
Barnes & Noble/Borders/Costco $1.30
Amazon $0.00
The money you spend with locally-owned businesses continues to circulate as we pay employees, buy supplies and pay taxes that are used to provide basic services to residents.
 
Our local economies are key to a successful recovery from the current financial crisis. Amazon and many online retailers contribute nothing financially to our state and local economies, yet suck up an enormous amount of Maryland’s shopping dollars and compete heavily with small natural foods stores, hardware stores, bookstores and specialty stores of all kinds.
 
While Amazon may have made their name selling books, they want you to buy a DVD player, organic foods, power tools and pick up the latest John Grisham title when you visit their site. They actively fight any attempt to force them to collect sales taxeven in those states where they have a physical presence. Maryland Senate Bill 1071 will allow us to join other states, such as New York and Kansas, that are now collecting sales tax for online sales and using the revenue for education and public safety.
 
Building Community as You Shop
Building community is an ongoing process, the result of small choices made everyday. We know you understand this, but are very busy and shopping online is seductive. We sympathize and have many of the same worries. But independents live in and serve your community and make many intangible contributions. What does Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, do for our community? We are:

  • working for quality public schools
  • advocating for smart growth and sustainable development
  • pushing for comprehensive planning and public transit
  • serving on local boards and committees
  • supporting your causes
  • and operating a business that recycles, reuses and donates.
And, except for that last item, we’ll continue to do these things.
(more…)

Nelson George

Thursday, April 2 6:30 pm
Sumner School, 17th & M St., NW



Nelson George: City Kid from Nelson George on Vimeo.
Really, you should not miss this. Good book, good writer.

Update: If you missed Nelson’s event, check out his NY Times essay and a related blog post with Vimeo slideshow. Signed books available in the store.

Ta-Nehisi Coates & Gwen Ifill


Some of you may remember Ta-Nehisi Coates as a Vertigo regular and erstwhile bookseller. We hope you will join us Friday and talk with Ta-Nehisi (please note this is a change from our original date). Ta-Nehisi is a careful listener and a young writer exceptionally attuned to the nuances of debate. If you are not familiar with Ta-Nehisi’s writing for the Atlantic and his blog, here’s an intro.

On January 19, 2009 Ta-Nehisi joined Rev. Joe Lowery and others to talk with Gwen Ifill. Gwen Ifill is well known for her fine work as a print journalist, at CBS and now as moderator of Washington Week and senior correspondent of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The Breakthrough makes us wish that she’d worked a book into her schedule a little sooner. The Los Angeles Times put it well—“a strongly reported book, with some broad conclusions drawn from scores of interviews and peppered with interesting, revealing profiles…Yet this is more than a book of connected profiles and narratives. Ifill bores at varying depths into race, class, gender and generational change.”

We Knew Him When…

Barack ObamaAbout 13 and half years ago, Vertigo Books hosted Barack Obama at our old location near Dupont Circle for his memoir. We were the DC stop on a modest book tour. It was August of 1995, and you know, DC in August is not a stand-out month for events. You can find street parking near Dupont Circle the town is so empty. We tried to push the event date to September, but no go.

It was, shall we say, an intimate gathering. I’d read the book and liked it, thought it a strong debut and told folks so. We discussed community organizing (I’d moved to DC to work for ACORN) and books to fill the time while a small group of regulars filtered in. As we spoke, Barack Obama listened with his now famous detachment, listening and appraising. He read fairly well–for a debut author–there were a few questions, books were signed and he was out the door. No escort as I recall.

In the DC area, we sometimes take the great diversity of voices in our daily lives for granted. Our store has always hoped to engage all American voices, but like many we thought the real change would come with our children’s generation. That’s why Monday’s book event is a special pleasure: it is an opportunity for young children and their parents to participate in the Day of Service, albeit in a small way.

In February we’ll continue the conversation with journalists and authors Ta-Nehisi Coates and Gwen Ifill.

Postscript-Vertigo has also hosted the Inaugural Poet, professor and critic Elizabeth Alexander (as well as her mother, historian Adele Logan Alexander). Elizabeth has been active for years with Cave Canem and they will be hosting an event Monday night for other Cave Canem poets.

Martinis, Moms & Madness?

Sandra Tsing Lohor PTA Moms (& Dads) Night Out–Complete with Vodka Raffle
Thursday, December 4 7 pm

UPDATE: Thanks to all who attended last night. It was a pleasure to host Sandra and the East Coast Burning Moms. Congrats to our raffle winners: Kate, Christine and Rebecca. Here’s the school Q & A site Sandra mentioned. If you missed the event, signed copies are available at the store.

Join us this Thursday to hear Sandra Tsing Loh discuss parenting, public schools, democracy and what have you. Like us, she thinks a little sense of humor can make almost anything both bearable and doable. Listen, laugh, buy a book and win a chance at a fine bottle of vodka.

While you may know her as a voice on NPR or as a writer, Sandra is also a leader in the Los Angeles public school reform movement and argues persuasively for public education.  Besides writing the Scandalously Informal Guide to the LAUSD,she and other yentas now answer public school questions at martini-fueled events in LA.

Vodka at Vertigo

or PTA Moms (& Dads) Night Out
Thursday, December 4 7 pm



Our book buyer now believes that all authors should have liquor sponsors. That’s because Sandra Tsing Loh does and we’ll be raffling off fine sipping vodka from Modern Spirits during her visit on Thursday, December 4. Sandra is swinging by to discuss parenting and public school life and we hope you’ll join us.

Media Attention…

that we very much wish had not been necessary. Read Washington Post writer Bob Thompson on life at Vertigo Books and other stores and listen to Kojo Nnamdi (a serious book guy) discuss Paperback Dreams (the City Paper liked it).

This Week, Etc.

Join us Wednesday, November 12 as Prof. Audrey Kerr discusses her book, The Paper Bag Principle. This should be of interest to Washingtonians and readers of sociology, American studies, history and African American studies/history. Thursday brings us a visit from director and producer Alex Beckstead. He’ll screen and discuss Paperback Dreams, a documentary about two important West Coast bookstores.


And it seems we have a Facebook group, the Vertigo Books Appreciation Society. This was started by our Jen, a greatly missed long-time employee. She’s pining for a bookstore in the wilds of CT.

DC to Burma

Thursday, October 30 6:30 pm
Sumner School, 1201 17th Street, NW (17th & M Streets)

Perry-Wanted-Poster
In 1944, 21-year-old Army Pvt. Herman Perry was working on the Ledo Road, a massive military project in inhospitable terrain. Perry, a black soldier, shot and killed his white commanding officer, then disappeared into the jungle, where he joined a tribe of headhunters and eluded capture for months. In Now the Hell Will Start, Koerner’s superb reporting creates a memorable book that is part thriller, part history—even the Post’s Jonathan Yardley liked it! More images.

Bookstore Love

Thursday, November 13 7 pm


Paperback Dreams Trailer from abeckstead on Vimeo.
Join us and producer/director Alex Beckstead as we screen and discuss his latest film. It’s an ode to two extraordinary bookstores that were key to the Free Speech Movement, but–more importantly–to their communities. In a world of 24/7 news, Blackberries interrupting dinner and tech-free vacations, Beckstead shows us the great worth of building community a bit more slowly, the old fashioned way–face to face while talking about books.

Tim Reid & Tom Dreesen

Thursday, October 16 7 pm


Tim Reid & Tom Dreesen will visit our store soon. 1968 brought our country the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, Vietnam, student demonstrations, the Democratic convention in Chicago, the drug revolution, the sex revolution…so of course, a comedy team involving a black guy and white guy made perfect sense. Check them out in a WKRP clip and a classic routine. As always, books to be signed must be purchased at Vertigo.