Entertainment Weekly writer Stephan Lee discusses the death of Borders Books and the world of independent book stores. It includes a shout out to Heights Books on Montague Street (now home to Crumbs cupcake store):
EW.com: While I have fond memories of Borders, there’s a personal touch to a good independent that a chain just can’t replicate. During my first summer in New York City a few years back, when I was interning for a notoriously demanding movie producer, my first assignment was to track down an obscure, out-of-print biography of Carole Lombard by the next day. I couldn’t find it anywhere — none of the used theater bookstores had it, and neither did the online marketplaces. This producer made Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada look tame; he would absolutely be the type to tell me not to come back for my second day without the book, but not before yelling at me and throwing a desktop computer at my head. After a full day of searching dusty Manhattan bookshops and walking into the apartments of strangers from Craigslist who’d claimed to have the book (they didn’t), I returned to my student housing building in Brooklyn Heights sure that I’d be fired and humiliated the next day. After dinner on Montague Street that night, I stopped in a small used bookstore, Heights Books (pictured above, since relocated), and asked the friendly salesperson if they by any chance had the Lombard book, not for one moment thinking they would. The man immediately went to a back corner, moved a few stacks of books around, and presented me with a lovingly used copy of the book I was looking for. For the rest of the summer, I was treated like a super-intern, and I returned to Heights Books many times for their quirky yet broad selection and their actual discounts (Strand, you don’t compare).
