… only to give us Assouline, a store that specializes in big books with lots of pictures and can found in Crystals. However, you needn’t bother shopping there unless you have money out the assouline. Or as a company exec more elegantly puts it, his products are for the consumer who “is inured to the economy.”
We have runners-up! Also-ran guesses for which U.S. state has the second-most casinos were all good ones, focusing on states with large indigenous populations (which is fancy talk for “lots of tribal gambling”). California‘s 58 casinos give it undisputed third place, but fourth and fifth place go to two states that nobody guessed: South Dakota (43) and Colorado (37, and proud home to both the Brass Ass and Bullwhackers casinos). Washington (28), Arizona (23) and Michigan (21) all fall in the upper middle of the pack, behind Mississippi‘s 30 gambling halls, deep in the Bible Belt.
Well lets go one step further (or back) which state has the second highest number of casinos excluding tribal casinos. Its early and I don’t have a clue!!
I never got the Reading Room hype. People would bring it up over and over through the years, and I guess it was Glenn Schaeffer’s legacy or something, but I just didn’t get the point Was it just that it was in a casino? I went in there several times and saw the same stuff I could get at Barnes & Borders at Strip prices.
Yes, the “why is this city so godawful and berift of community?” people, of which I am a member, looked up from our bus-stop copies of CityLife long enough to acknowledge that it was a not so corporate, independently owned bookstore in a city that seems to love the national chain to death and hasn’t heard of a locally owned anything that wasn’t a casino.
But honestly, I grew up in a city that had an indie-owned bookstore downtown that the community loved so much that they started throwing rocks in the window of a Barnes that moved right next door (nevermind that Barnes renovated a long-abandoned department store and retained it’s art-deco charms at great expense.) The indie bookstore has since left that flagship location because of the competitive heat, the Barnes is still there, and you know what? I still don’t have trouble buying books, or buy them online. *shrug*
I don’t understand the antagonism to Assouline. It is a nice little store with books any art or design enthusiast would enjoy. Some of their items are very expensive, but they have many books under $20 and quite a few others at $40.