Transcript

Panel 1: Sara is walking down a city sidewalk; she's in front of a building with a lot of windows on the upper floors and a ground-level business with the sign "West 19 Books" (or Books West 19, as the sign's broken up and could be read in a different order). We can assume this is on West 19th Street. The bookstore is between a vacant business (a 'store for rent' sign is on the awning) and a business called Photo + Print Werx.

Panel 2: A middle-aged man sits behind a desk; a book is resting open on the desk and he's staring vacantly at a computer monitor

Panel 3: Sara appears in front of the man. He closes the book with a snap and says, "Sara! Here to beg for your old job back?"

Panel 4: The man, with a look of concern, continues, "... Sara?"

037
Posted on September 24, 2025 by Shayna Marchese

Playlist:
Sparks / Sherlock Holmes (1982) / YouTube

The bookshop Sara enters is on West 19th Street and is next to a photo shop. There used to be many of these in the area before digital photography really took off -- 23rd Street had a large photo and copy center called Clicks, there was Manhattan Color Labs on West 20th, there were several locations of Spectra Photo, and on and on. The camera store Adorama is still on West 18th Street but that's about all you'll find now. The area's bookstores have also mostly moved or closed, though there's still an independent children's bookstore on West 17th. The cavernous flagship Barnes & Noble was located on 5th Avenue and 18th Street (it opened in 1932 and closed in 2014 and carried textbooks but not magazines or really any sort of non-book media). Nearby Union Square still has The Strand and a more typical Barnes & Noble with a café.

Leave a Reply