Loss of an institution

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Loss of an institution

1LamSon
Bewerkt: mei 30, 2020, 5:10 pm

The science fiction bookstore, Uncle Hugos, has fallen to the senseless violence in Minneapolis, Minnesota. UH is billed as the oldest science fiction bookstore in America. It was an unbelievable place. If they didn't have it, nobody did. There are reports that it is total destroyed by fire.
I hope they return, but I doubt it.

Hopefully, if the opportunity arises, people will be able to donate some of their duplicates to help get the store back on its feet.

Check out the photo.
https://twitter.com/CubeApril/status/1266783596507004928/photo/1

2DugsBooks
mei 30, 2020, 11:42 pm

At the risk of being insensitive, hope they had insurance that covered that kind of stuff.

3AnnieMod
mei 31, 2020, 12:06 am

I saw that earlier and was gutted. While talking about property while people are dying and a city is burning can be seen as heartless and misplaced, this is a tragedy indeed. And its sister bookstore next door (Uncle Edgar's) which was as important in the mystery genres fell as well... :(

>2 DugsBooks:
Civil unrest is very often excluded from insurance claims explicitly and I have the very bad feeling this WILL qualify as such.

4anglemark
mei 31, 2020, 5:57 am

>2 DugsBooks:, >3 AnnieMod: The owner has confirmed that they were insured, but he too has the very bad feeling that this isn't covered. If it isn't, he will crowdfund to get back again.

5mnleona
mei 31, 2020, 8:12 am

I saw them on the long list of buildings. Such a sad loss.

6aspirit
Bewerkt: mei 31, 2020, 9:59 am

This book burning is a devastating loss. The likely motivation behind it is also a further reminder that we are repeating the worst of recent history.

Those are my thoughts, though. I looked up what the people at the bookstore had to say. Uncle Hugo's has posted a statement.

http://www.unclehugo.com/prod/index.shtml

In part...

"The Twin Cities are facing arson, rioting, and vandalism. Per the local authorities, as of this morning, virtually all of the people arrested for these crimes are from out of state. Eyewitness accounts and livestreams report fires being set by young white men."

Don Blyly "appreciates the outpouring of support he has received from around the globe. He is currently considering various options, but will need some time to process this tragedy and loss before he is ready to make decisions. Please respect that. Watch the store Facebook page for news."

I think of Facebook as primarily a site for White supremacy. Unfortunately, the store is only giving further updates there...

https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Independent-Bookstore/Uncle-Hugos-Scienc...

7mnleona
Bewerkt: mei 31, 2020, 6:30 pm

deleted

8LamSon
mei 31, 2020, 6:39 pm

Mr. Floyd's death is an unbelievable tragedy, by the hand of a peace officer, no less. However, there is no excuse for the level of destruction that has rained down on Minneapolis. It will not rectify anything. Fortunately the protests and rallies on Sunday have been peaceful.

9iansales
Bewerkt: jun 1, 2020, 2:46 am

Except riots have changed a lot - the Suffragettes, Stonewall, even the October Revolution. Look how little Occupy, a peaceful protest, achieved - you have Trump in the White House. So yes, there is more than enough excuse for the destruction.

10aspirit
Bewerkt: jun 1, 2020, 10:19 am

>9 iansales: The destruction wasn't by protestors of George Floyd's murder. What connection is there other than timing? Whoever's willing to burn rare books seems uninterested in supporting Black lives or resisting overall police brutality.

>6 aspirit: Update: the Uncle Hugo's website says the owner is thinking of setting up mail orders.

That could be better for dealing with the pandemic, too.

11Shrike58
jun 1, 2020, 12:00 pm

I have yet to hear a reasonable account of the the protests in the wake of this case of police abuse of violence but I'm more likely to blame wannabe blackshirts than wannabe anarchists right now. It is a damn shame however you slice it.

12kiparsky
jun 1, 2020, 5:02 pm

Ugh, this is terrible. I just visited the shop's page, and I saw this, which seems worth passing on:


Hello loyal Uncles fans,

Elizabeth here. I spoke with Don this afternoon regarding this topic and am conveying his views here. He has spoken with several people about crowdfunding, and asked them NOT to implement anything on his behalf. One person refused to comply with Don's request, and Don is following up to have that effort stopped.

There are a lot of complex issues involved in any possible rebuilding of the store, including insurance, city ordinances, and business requirements for newly constructed buildings (as opposed to existing structures). Until Don has definite information about all these things, he will not be making any decisions regarding rebuilding.

At that point, if he decides to crowdfund, he will do it in under his own name, and you will know about it because the information will be posted here on the store website, and as an official store Facebook post. In the meantime, anyone else purporting to be fundraising for the store is doing it without Don's consent, and against his expressed wishes.


So if you see any solicitations for crowdfunding, best to hold off until you see it confirmed at the store's site

Meantime, I'm going to treat this thread as a place to mourn a loss and personally will be discussing the politics of the matter elsewhere.

13gypsysmom
jun 3, 2020, 4:14 pm

I had not heard this piece of news before. Some years ago when I was still working I had to go to a conference in Minneapolis. The person who arranged my travel booked me in a hotel right across the street from Uncle Hugos/Uncle Edgars. I spent hours (not during conference time) in the store and I must have come home with 20 books in my luggage. Good thing I could fit them all in my suitcase. I haven't been back to the store since but I have often wished we had such an institution in my city. I do hope they can reopen.

16aspirit
jun 3, 2020, 7:32 pm

>15 cpg: I think you missed the thread you'd wanted. This is one is in the Science Fiction Fans group and for talking about a bookstore.

17AnnieMod
jun 3, 2020, 7:50 pm

18RandyStafford
jun 4, 2020, 5:03 pm

19karenb
Bewerkt: jun 4, 2020, 5:45 pm

Crowdfunding has begun. Link from store's own site (posted 3 June):
https://www.gofundme.com/f/let-us-help-save-uncle-hugo039s

Note that unlike many Lake Street businesses, Don Blyly owned his building. It's one of the reasons the Hugos lasted this long, as independent bookstores: a business decision made many years ago.

20LamSon
jun 5, 2020, 9:25 pm

The October Revolution simply exchanged one repressive regime for another. Then, of course, there all the IRA bombings.

It hardly matters if it was blackshirts or anarchists. In the end 600 businesses were damaged or destroyed. Hundreds of people no longer have jobs and hundreds more have nowhere to shop; people in the communities the rioters profess to be fighting for.

The central branch of the public library was also damaged.

21iansales
jun 6, 2020, 1:58 pm

>20 LamSon: Not true. Even at its most repressive, Russians in the USSR had more freedoms than they had under the tsars. And the IRA bombings is a false equivalence - that was a concerted campaign against an occupying government among a population split on sectarian lines.

In the end, 600 businesses mean nothing against the systemic repression of black people in the US, and the various police forces' racist campaigns of violence against them. George Floyd's life was worth more than any bookshop.

22cpg
jun 6, 2020, 4:44 pm

>21 iansales: "George Floyd's life was worth more than any bookshop."

NOW, do you see the relevance of >15 cpg:?

23anglemark
jun 6, 2020, 6:00 pm

>22 cpg: No, because stltoday.com refuses to comply with the EU GDPR, and will not display any content to me: "451: Unavailable due to legal reasons"

24AnnieMod
jun 6, 2020, 6:18 pm

>22 cpg:

Still irrelevant in this specific thread - as much as "but the children in Africa are hungry" is irrelevant in a discussion of food waste in my local supermarket. You do not trump one bad thing with another, regardless if the second one is a tragedy or not.

Someone getting shot is tragic. Posting about it in a thread about a burned down bookstore is trolling. Yes - we all know that people's life are more important than any property. But that does not mean we cannot discuss the lost cultural institution as well and that unconnected murders should be brought up in it.

25iansales
jun 7, 2020, 5:03 am

>22 cpg: >23 anglemark: Same here.

>24 AnnieMod: It's not trolling if it's responding to a point made by someone in the discussion. And it's not whataboutery - as a comment on starving children in Africa would be - because the destruction occurred during a protest triggered by George Floyd's murder by the police. It is directly connected.

26LamSon
jun 7, 2020, 5:01 pm

Hey, did anyone hear about Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore? It was burned to the ground by rioters attempting to strike a blow against the oppressors. They succeded in depriving the oppressed of jobs and resources. Well done!

>21 iansales: I suspect the people who suffered through the purges, famines, gulags and who had to live in a surveillance state might disagree. The IRA blew shit up and killed people for their cause. '600 businesses mean nothing' unless your one of the business owners or members of the black community who will have trouble getting groceries and prescriptions.

>24 AnnieMod: Agreed. I'm guilty. Many topics on LT stray from their initial posts.

27GaryMcGath
jun 9, 2020, 7:59 pm

Minneapolis cops were caught slashing tires. Would it be too outrageous to suspect they might have engaged in a bit of arson as well to make the protesters look bad?

28LolaWalser
Bewerkt: jun 10, 2020, 7:37 am

>25 iansales:

Right.

This thread is worse than any trolling and it was clear from the "senseless violence" in the OP. Yeah, there may not be much or any sense to any individual destruction in the protests, but if you can't see why the protests are happening, if you won't acknowledge the horrible reality black people live in the US, in all the white supremacist countries... you don't understand anything and don't deserve anyone to give a shit about your feelings about a bookshop.

ETA: "general you". I'm in full agreement with Ian.

29LolaWalser
jun 9, 2020, 11:01 pm

Why is >28 LolaWalser: getting flagged?

30iansales
jun 10, 2020, 2:41 am

>29 LolaWalser: Not by me. Although I had to read it twice to realise you were agreeing with me :-)

31LolaWalser
jun 10, 2020, 7:37 am

>30 iansales:

Sorry, I thought it was evident.

32GaryMcGath
jun 10, 2020, 9:49 am

"In the end, 600 businesses mean nothing against the systemic repression of black people in the US, and the various police forces' racist campaigns of violence against them. George Floyd's life was worth more than any bookshop."

The comparison is irrelevant. A beating by the cops is less important than to a killing. Does that mean we should ignore or trivialize the beatings? People are capable of recognizing more than one wrong at a time.

33paradoxosalpha
Bewerkt: jun 10, 2020, 11:05 am

>28 LolaWalser:
I had the same reaction to "senseless" in the OP, and sat on my hands to avoid injecting vitriol into LT. But you put it well.

>27 GaryMcGath:
Not the least bit outrageous. At the very least, there is a documented track record of police letting fires and looting proceed while meting out abuse and "punishment" to medics, journalists, and political organizers.

34LolaWalser
jun 10, 2020, 12:00 pm

>33 paradoxosalpha:

Ha... Thing is, I bit my tongue originally too... because by the time I saw the thread, the last post was >3 AnnieMod:, and I had already blocked Pro & Con (again!) because all the shitheadery there finally broke me and Annie had at least floated the idea that it may be "heartless" to talk in the same breath about losing a bookshop and losing a life and so I just red-xed it at that point, making apologies in my mind à la "nerds will be nerds" etc. Weak, weak as water.

But I was entering stuff into the second account and made a mistake of glancing at Talk from there, and then I unignored the thread because it had of course got worse, and with the involvement of certain people who are rarely seen in this group but regularly show up when something particularly horrendously racist happens (search this site for Dylann Roof for example), and they feel compelled to... shall we say, downplay such things.

In that company in particular I couldn't stand having Ian's post called trolling--what irony! in a thread with right-wing dog whistles.

Aside: Annie, I don't mean to attack you, we don't see eye to eye often but I like and respect you, I just think you can't have considered what a lack of perspective your remark implied. As Ian already replied to you, of course Floyd's death has everything to do with, maybe not why this bookshop specifically was destroyed if we want to be pedantic about proximate and ultimate causation, but how it came to be that this bookshop was destroyed. But of course it's also not just because of George Floyd's death, but also all those other deaths, and persecutions, and harassment, and injustice, injustice that hasn't gone away after centuries, injustice that is continued, and persists, and is getting worse.

35AnnieMod
Bewerkt: jun 10, 2020, 12:57 pm

>34 LolaWalser:
The death that cpg mentioned with his link was not Floyd’s if you click on that link. He brought up another killing in that link. That is the death I call irrelevant to this conversation. Not Floyd’s. And no one called Ian’s post trolling - I called that link from cpg trolling.

I don' think that anyone tried to even imply that the bookstore burning is more important than human lives and the bigger issues in US. But on the other hand, we need to talk about the smaller things that happen around the big picture - we cannot just ignore them (because ignoring never works - and these last few weeks prove exactly that). Thus me answering to the thread at all. Implying that I don't care about the bigger picture is a bit... uninformed.

36iansales
Bewerkt: jun 10, 2020, 12:55 pm

>35 AnnieMod: My mistake. The link is unreadable outside the US, as was mentioned. I must have assumed it was about Floyd.

To be fair, this discussion has been extremely well-mannered and sensible, even though it's a subject that gets many hot under the collar. If you want to see some real gammons in action, then just mention tearing down a statue :-)

37AnnieMod
jun 10, 2020, 1:01 pm

>36 iansales:

Sorry for that - I did see your note that you cannot read it but I missed to consider that this means that my comment to cpg can be misread that way - probably because it never crossed my mind that my comment may be read as if it is for Floyd or that anyone can make a comment like that about Floyd.

I grew up in Bulgaria - we went through the tearing statues stage a couple of decades ago. We even literally packed a mausoleum with explosives and threw fire on it... :)

38LolaWalser
jun 10, 2020, 1:09 pm

>35 AnnieMod:

I apologise for misunderstanding your exchange with Ian. I have cpg on Ignore from yonks, and people saying the link wasn't working didn't make it more likely I'd read their post.

39paradoxosalpha
jun 10, 2020, 1:11 pm

>36 iansales: If you want to see some real gammons in action, then just mention tearing down a statue :-)

Yesterday I saw in a news clip the delightful protester signage: "Where we're going, we don't need Rhodes!"

40iansales
jun 10, 2020, 2:47 pm

>39 paradoxosalpha: I've already been blocked by someone on FB because they got upset when I pointed out Churchill was a massive racist so we really shouldn't have statues of him :-)

41AnnieMod
jun 10, 2020, 2:59 pm

>38 LolaWalser: No worries. It did not click for me that this is how you (and apparently Ian) read my comment until that last "Aside" and I was a bit surprised by the reaction before that - I was careful to get my comment IDs right so I thought it is clear I am responding to cpg about their own comments (both the link and the followup on "see how it is relevant") but apparently it did not work that way. With hindsight, if someone does not click and/or read the link, I can see how that happened.

42iansales
jun 10, 2020, 4:40 pm

>41 AnnieMod: I apologise too, although I hope my position on the matter is clear.

43paradoxosalpha
jun 10, 2020, 5:08 pm

>40 iansales: blocked by someone on FB

"I am not a gentleman and I have no friends." --Oscar Wilde

44AnnieMod
jun 10, 2020, 5:19 pm

>42 iansales: Considering that I do not disagree with you either in principle or anywhere in the thread... :)

That does not stop me from being unhappy with the destruction and wishing it did not happen - which is why I posted >3 AnnieMod: - acknowledging that something did happen and being unhappy about it does not mean that this is the thing you are the most unhappy about or you do not see its place in the bigger picture.

Maybe I should have realized that this may not be the thinking of everyone in the thread and that I should have mentioned it explicitly. I tend to stay away from political discussions online most of the time and tend to trust people to be decent human beings (and for people to assume the same).

Anyway - no harm done. Although for awhile here I was a bit bewildered with the reactions. :)

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