You've arrived at 74th St/Roosevelt Ave in Jackson Heights. You walk a few blocks up Roosevelt Ave…read more to 80th St. and make a right. You'll see them. Racks of books on sale outside and a small hole the in wall with the name of the business: Libreria Barco de Papel, which means "The Paper Boat Bookstore"
Behold the last brick and mortar true Spanish Bookstore in New York City.
A few years into the 21st century, old business models started to conspicuously disappear from common life. The world hardly noticed, me included, but in the blink of 2,000 days, I now get my indie movie fix from my streaming device at home, and having picked up Kurosawa's "Seven Samurais" from the Blockbuster at 9th St. and Broadway now seems like a distant memory. It was 2006.
So it was stopping by Lectorum (the famed Spanish Bookstore in West 14th St.) on a perfect summer afternoon after work all those years ago. Back "then", places like Coliseum Books, the Gotham Mart or Lectorum seemed unmovable institutions that represented the very heart and core of the most cosmopolitan city in the world. It took only a few years more for all of them to be gone forever.
In the winter of 2006, on a snowy night, me and my ex GF were taking a shortcut to her apt. in Woodside when I saw Libreria Barco de Papel for the first time. It was Sunday, about 9:00pm and its isolated and melancholic location, not to mention the fact that it was open, caught my eye, aroused my curiosity and commanded my motion. I entered and browsed the selection of books in awe. That night, Libreria Barco de Papel gave me Alfonso Reyes, without knowing that I was walking away with the writer who Borges himself called his master. I also picked my first Valle-Inclan and Zorrilla. I never saw or found Libreria Barco de Papel again.
Six years later, while on a haze of nostalgia remembering those summer days gone by, I remembered the unassuming Spanish bookstore in Elmhurst and frantically tried to search for it on the Internet with no success. It dawned on me then that with Lectorum gone, perhaps the last all-Spanish bookstore in New York had closed its doors, and that alarmed me. Here was displayed either one of two things; the NYC Spanish readership had all switched to Kindle, or the number of Spanish readers had dramatically decreased from one generation to the next despite the hike of Latin peoples demographic growth.
Either way, a loss of bookstores now is a blow to culture, although I'm sure that in a 100 years this process will appear to readers of history as unavoidable.
Everything human-made is just like Libreria Barco de Papel ominously heralds in its chosen name: a paper boat at sea destined to be dissolved by the oceans of time.
But then, as I was about to give up my googling, a stay of execution to old ways came in the form of a directory entry on a random internet site. There was this Spanish bookstore tucked away on 80th St in Elmhurst. I asked for a day off, my birthday, and I walked inside and rejoiced in deep emotion. This was the one. Nothing had changed.
The near-mint condition tomes of the Coleccion Austral Classics from the 1960's were there. The Catedra Edition ones printed in Madrid in the 90's with which I grew up with were also there, alongside the more modern Alfaguara ones. I happily shelled $70.00 USD as my self-gift and I have paid my King's Fifth to the bookstore often since then. Ortega & Gasset, Benito Perez Galdos, Baltasar Gracian, Juan Leon Mera; nothing can replace the feeling of browsing in silence and barely touching with your fingertips the spines of books that contain untold wisdom, pain, thoughts that elevate our often farcical flesh into anything but. The smell of old pages, the selection process which goes both ways, because books mysteriously select you just as you select them.
Libreria has since gone to Facebook, and every day it selects a Spanish poem or a piece of trivia from an author I didn't knew and it teaches me something. It also holds symposiums and supports poetry and readings in the community. It has since gained adepts and hopefully, customers.
And while yes, I do have a Kindle (for books long out of print), and yes, there are 2 more Spanish bookstores in New York I've found since; one in Spanish Harlem and one in Inwood; both of the "New Age" Kind, while Libreria Barco de Papel is indeed, the last true brick and mortar Spanish Bookstore in New York City.
And hence I'll stand by it for as long as I'm a New Yorker. And nothing could be more apt, more rewarding, than to be its first reviewer.
