Bill and Mark each own English language bookstores in Quito. Both stores are located on a street named Jose Calama, a street that essentially runs through the heart of La Mariscal Foch, the epicenter of tourism in Quito. The surrounding area is full of hostels, bars, nightclubs, restaurants, coffee shops, internet cafés, Spanish language schools, and travel agencies. Simply put, if you wanted to locate an English language bookstore anywhere in the city, this is where you would want it to be. Bill and Mark’s bookstores are only a block and a half apart. Bill and Mark hate each other. Bill and Mark hate each other fiercely.
A Tale of Two Bookstores: Part One
I first walked into Bill’s bookstore on one of my first days in Quito back in September. A red neon sign in the store’s window simply said, “Books.” Bill, a middle-aged guy with a bit of a beer belly and wearing a University of Illinois sweatshirt, sat at a desk just inside the store’s entrance. As he finished up a BBQ sandwich from a restaurant a few doors down, Bill was giving instructions to another middle-aged guy. The instructions dealt with where the liquor store was and what kind of beer he should buy and bring back for them to share. “You fly; I’ll buy. Tell them it is for the gringo at the bookstore.”
I poked around the bookstore; it was getting close to closing time and I was trying to burn a few minutes while waiting to make a phone call back to the States. My impression of the store was it wasn’t messy, but cluttered in the way stores selling used books are supposed to be. A small table displayed several items - a Don DeLillo novel, a book about Darwin and Galapagos, one of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s lesser-known works - that would appeal to the stereotypical English-speaking tourist in Ecuador. The fiction section was orderly and contained some books that I would classify as finds if I stumbled upon them in a bookstore in the United States. The non-fiction section was a bit sparser and revealed that Bill had a thing for military history. Next to the desk where Bill sat there were clearly marked sections containing travel guides and books by Latin American authors in English translation. I got the sense the store was closing up. I left.
A few days later I returned around lunchtime to get my hands on one of those great finds, Donald Barthelme’s Sixty Stories. I approached the counter. Bill was tucking into a plate of greasy food and drinking a can of Grolsch that rested inside of a beer koozie. I briefly exchanged pleasantries with him, remarked on how impressed I was to find the collection of Barthelme's short stories, and paid up. He slipped a bookmark into the book and I slipped out of the store.
The bookmark prominently featured a crayfish holding a Confederate flag and the following information:
Here is what I found out: Each time I entered the store Bill was eating greasy food and / or drinking beer, or negotiating with someone to go and bring him greasy food and / or beer. I once overheard Bill asking someone in the middle of the afternoon if he wanted a beer. The man replied by asking what time he should come back in the evening. “No, I mean now,” Bill countered, “I drink on the job.”
Bill is a Catholic who comes from a Polish family in Chicago. He left the United States over five years ago and wound up buying this bookstore from its previous owner, a man from New Orleans who gave the store its name. When Bill bought the store he decided to keep the name.
I also found out that Bill is married to an Ecuadorian woman and is an absolutely voracious reader.
A Tale of Two Bookstores: Part Two
One day in late September while I was riding the bus to Mariscal Foch I got off one stop too late and wound up backtracking by foot down some roads I’d never walked before. Surprisingly, on Jose Calama, I passed a modest looking bookstore with a sign that simply said “English Bookstore.” I raced inside.
The bookstore was a mess. I am a connoisseur of bookstores and libraries. This was, without question, the most poorly organized bookstore I have ever experienced. With fiction I literally could not even find where “A” began. In English we all know that we read from left to right. When we organize authors alphabetically we put, for example, “Hemingway” to the left of “Hesse” and “Hesse” to the left of “Homes.” Within any given letter, the books at the English bookstore were organized correctly from left to right, but the letters themselves were arranged from right to left. In other words, if you were searching for Jane Austen and found they didn’t have any Austen books in stock, you would need to move to your left to see if they had any books by the Bronte sisters. This was disorienting.
Next, it is always a bad sign when you have use little white stickers, the type you might purchase at an office supply store, to indicate where one section ends and another begins. Just to the right of the counter of the English Bookstore was the most prominent shelf in the store. A maze of little white stickers ran vertically and horizontally separating “New Arrivals,” “Humor,” and “Rentals.” If you were to lie down on the floor, you would find the section with Latin American authors. It is unmarked.
Yes, I did just write “Rentals.” Mark decided that all the books that are in high demand should be available only for rent. This is about the stupidest business practice I can imagine. I would have to guess that a significant percentage of Mark’s business is derived from travelers who don’t want to be encumbered with having to return to this very same bookstore at a future time to return the book.
It gets worse. First, The English Bookstore grossly mis-categorized several books. Non-fiction books were stuck in with fiction. The travel section contained a copy of Palace Walk, a very successful novel. (To be fair, I did find one book mis-categorized at The Confederate Bookstore. It was a pre-publication version of Timothy Tyson’s work of non-fiction, Blood Done Sign My Name, the account of a race-based murder in North Carolina. Or, perhaps the fact this book was placed in the fiction section was not unintentional.)
It gets even worse. The English Bookstore is crammed into a room that also holds a small hearth. The fireplace is very much out-of-order, but it does create a nifty space to display a couple of books. Out of his entire inventory, Mark chose to display the book How to Make Love like a Porn Star by adult film star Jenna Jameson.
As depressing as the state of The English Bookstore is, books were not my prime motivation for walking into the store. Instead of Mark, a young man was working behind the counter. I needed to get the scoop, “What is the deal with that other bookstore just up the street?” I didn’t get much concrete information, only that the guy who ran the bookstore down the street was “a piece of work.” This was said while the guy working the counter made a circle around his ear with his index finger, implying that “piece of work” was synonymous with “crazy.” I discovered that many of The English Bookstore’s customers come in and fume about being offended by Bill. According to the guy working the counter Bill has alienated a whole lot of people; he refuses to send business to The English Bookstore if he doesn’t have something in stock; he refuses to acknowledge that there is even another English language bookstore in town; and that the respective owners have a feud going between them that has lasted many years.
Interlude: Can it really be that hard?
Perhaps what I am about to write is grossly naïve, but I just can’t imagine that developing and executing a business plan for an English Bookstore in Quito is that hard. The most important part is to understand your customer base. I would imagine your customer base would include (from larger in number to smaller):
1) English-speaking tourists of all ages, but especially younger backpackers.
2) English-speaking ex-pats who are living in Quito. These would include English teachers, embassy workers, those working with non-profit / service organizations, religious missionaries, etc.
3) Students doing study-abroad in a Spanish immersion program.
4) Tourists for whom English is a second language but buy books in English because they know they are not going to find a book in Swedish or Hungarian anywhere in Ecuador. Again, these would tend to be younger travelers.
What can we presume about the folks above? First, as the vast majority of the customers are either traveling or are staying for a limited amount of time, they don’t want to haul weight or to accumulate stuff. They are going to buy one book. Second, many of the people are on vacation and want something light they can read on a bus, a plane, or at the beach. Third, many of the people are traveling to have a cultural experience, an experience that is enhanced by reading Latin American authors or books about South America. Fourth, a significant number of the customers are young; it is worthwhile to find out what people in their 20s are reading. Fifth, the bookstore is a “different place” for travelers. When you step inside the door you have entered a small space where English is the dominant language. What other services might you offer in this different place? Sixth, by displaying the damn Confederate flag you alienate a whole lot of potential customers. Those from the United States who have chosen to come to Ecuador are especially likely to react negatively to the Confederate flag. (They are also not likely to want to travel around South America carrying the hardcover edition of a porn star’s memoirs.)
In other words, you are serving a niche. Find a way to stock lots of copies of books in high demand. (There is no reason not to have five copies of Che’s Motorcycle Diaries or Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude at any given time.) Institute a generous buyback program to obtain the copy of that book that someone bought at an airport bookstore and knocked off on the flight to Quito. Offer something that helps the store to stand apart for those people from English speaking countries.
Am I off the mark here?
A Conversation with Bill: Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
The time had come to spring the question on Bill about the Confederate flag. He already knew me a bit. I had been into his store to browse a half-dozen times and was always chipper and conversant. I asked him about books and made literary comments. Here are some excerpts from our conversation. [Note: the longer Bill talked, the more of a train wreck his comments became. At first I tried to listen. Then I found myself not wanting to argue for the reason that I couldn’t believe what was coming out of his mouth.
The Conversation begins…
T: So, I’ve got to ask you a question you must get a million times. How’d you decide on the name of the bookstore?
B: I’m a racist. [Long pause.] Actually, I bought the store from a Southerner from Louisiana and decided to keep the name. I like that it gets some people riled up. It makes the day more interesting.
T: How’s that working out for you?
B: It’s mostly college kids who think they know a lot but are really ignorant. It is fun to see them blow a fuse.
Bill on Barack Obama…
B: The only reason he won was that a lot of young people thought it would be cool to have a black president. [Thom wishes he said, “I’m sure that explains his 365 to 173 electoral college victory.”] Internationally Obama is a joke. The people in other countries love him but the leaders of other countries laugh at him behind his back. They all hated Bush but it didn’t matter because they feared Bush. Obama is a socialist and he is determined to transform the United States into a socialist nation.
T: Umm… I think there is a difference between socialism and regulated capitalism. A colleague of mine once said that a free market self-regulates like children playing in a sandbox self-regulate. The market needs adult supervision. I think Enron, Arthur Anderson, the Wall Street meltdown, and all the junk mortgages show that we need more regulations.
B: Nope, Obama is pushing for a total redistribution of wealth. Just check out the quotes from all the “czars” Obama has appointed.
T: I’m not familiar with those quotes. Where did you hear about them?
B: Glenn Beck… Obama is also eroding our freedoms?
T: Exactly which freedoms has he eroded?
B: Well, freedom of speech for starters. It is very subtle. Just look at how he is attacking FOX News, trying to get people not to watch them.
T: [Speechless.] [Thom wishes he had said, “I think that is the freedom of the press you are talking about, and your argument has completely confounded me and makes no sense whatsoever.]
Bill on Jews…
B: [After making several derogatory comments about Jews.] I’m an anti-Semite. But I’m also a Zionist. If we can get all of the Jews in one place we can keep an eye on them.
Bill on Religion…
B: There are a lot of groups active down here trying to push their religion on people. Jehovah’s Witnesses. Evangelicals. Mormons. I can’t stand people who try to push their religion on others. Someone once asked me who I prayed to and I answered, “The Virgin Mary.” The person then asked why I couldn’t pray to God directly but instead needed to pray through Mary. I told him that when I pray to the Virgin Mary I am praying to God. I believe God is a woman. Plus, the Hail Mary is shorter than the Our Father…. I’m a Roman Catholic. We’re a drinking, f***ing religion.
[Thom wishes he said, “You should put that on a T-Shirt.”]
Bill on Ecuadorians…
The people in this country are ignorant. They are like savages. They throw their trash on the side of the road. They foul their own land.
Bill on Hospitality…
[After a man brought him a 6-pack of beer.]
B: Hey, want a beer?
T: No thanks, I’ll probably have one later on tonight.
[Thom wishes he said, “Sorry, I don’t drink when I’m not working.”]
Bill on The English Bookstore…
They’re bad people. The owner stabbed me in the back. He hung around my store for years pretending to be my friend, took what he learned, and went and started his own store down the street.
I should also mention that Bill managed to slip in the N-word and the anti-gay F-word into the conversation. I have not put the above excerpts of our conversation in quotation marks because I can’t guarantee it is what was said word-for-word. Rather, the words above accurately represent the content of parts of our conversation.
A Conversation with Mark: Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
The next day I paid a visit to The English Bookstore and paid a visit to Mark. (The last time I was in the shop I had spotted a 2003 novel by Lucy Ellman, a book that I never knew existed. I read her first three novels for fun in college.) I introduced myself to Mark, a tall Englishman with a silver head of hair. I made small talk with him for about 10 minutes. He announced he was stepping outside for a smoke but that I should feel free to browse the shop.
Instead, I stepped near the entrance and continued the conversation, bringing up the subject of the Confederate Bookstore. Here are some of the things that Mark told me:
∙ Mark told me that he finds Bill’s political views insane and his racism intolerable. He told me that he receives a constant stream of customers who complain about Bill’s boorish behavior. According to Mark, Bill snaps at his customers. Supposedly, one of Bill’s customers asked him if he knew of a camera shop in the area and Bill responded, “Do I look like the F***ing Yellow Pages?” Apparently, Bill also delights in shocking his customers with racist comments. A recent customer reported that Bill referred to Obama as, “that floppy-eared n****r.” [For the record, I never witnessed Bill verbally abuse any of his customers.]
∙ Mark confessed that he doesn’t run his business very well. He said that Bill knows a lot more about books than he does. “I think that Bill likes books more than he likes people.” Mark also told me that he charges far more for books than Bill (about twice as much, in fact.) Mark told me about all his problems navigating customs in order to import books.
∙ Mark showed me his wall display of bookmarks from bookstores all over the world. It included a bookmark from The Confederate Bookstore, only the bookmark was covered with pen-drawings of little swastikas and other Third Reich symbols. Above Bill’s name was written “BOOK NAZI.”
∙ Mark told me that Bill is not a doctor in anything. When he first moved to Ecuador he got a certificate for teaching English and then started putting “Dr.” before his name. Mark also said that Bill left the United States and moved to Ecuador to beat $30,000 in debts.
∙ Mark proved himself to have a penchant for exaggeration. Towards the end of our conversation, Mark was talking about how dangerous Quito is. Mark says that 70% of his customers mention being either robbed or assaulted.
∙ Mark also had disparaging things to say about Ecuadorians. He said that Ecuadorians are dishonest, anti-social, and lazy. He said the main problem with this country is that people are lazy and don’t work hard. He compared Ecuadorians to the Colombians who are friendly and industrious.
∙ Mark also was opposed to and troubled by Ecuador’s embrace of socialism.
Conclusion
So I never did find out what truly lay at the heart of the hatred between the rival bookstore owners on Jose Calama Street in Quito, Ecuador in South America. I think I was most shocked by the patronizing, condescending, and infantilizing remarks made by both Mark and Bill about the people of the country in which they both live. I’m also quite surprised by the rampant dysfunction which both owners demonstrate in the operation of their businesses.
A Tale of Two Bookstores: Part One
I first walked into Bill’s bookstore on one of my first days in Quito back in September. A red neon sign in the store’s window simply said, “Books.” Bill, a middle-aged guy with a bit of a beer belly and wearing a University of Illinois sweatshirt, sat at a desk just inside the store’s entrance. As he finished up a BBQ sandwich from a restaurant a few doors down, Bill was giving instructions to another middle-aged guy. The instructions dealt with where the liquor store was and what kind of beer he should buy and bring back for them to share. “You fly; I’ll buy. Tell them it is for the gringo at the bookstore.”
I poked around the bookstore; it was getting close to closing time and I was trying to burn a few minutes while waiting to make a phone call back to the States. My impression of the store was it wasn’t messy, but cluttered in the way stores selling used books are supposed to be. A small table displayed several items - a Don DeLillo novel, a book about Darwin and Galapagos, one of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s lesser-known works - that would appeal to the stereotypical English-speaking tourist in Ecuador. The fiction section was orderly and contained some books that I would classify as finds if I stumbled upon them in a bookstore in the United States. The non-fiction section was a bit sparser and revealed that Bill had a thing for military history. Next to the desk where Bill sat there were clearly marked sections containing travel guides and books by Latin American authors in English translation. I got the sense the store was closing up. I left.
A few days later I returned around lunchtime to get my hands on one of those great finds, Donald Barthelme’s Sixty Stories. I approached the counter. Bill was tucking into a plate of greasy food and drinking a can of Grolsch that rested inside of a beer koozie. I briefly exchanged pleasantries with him, remarked on how impressed I was to find the collection of Barthelme's short stories, and paid up. He slipped a bookmark into the book and I slipped out of the store.
The bookmark prominently featured a crayfish holding a Confederate flag and the following information:
CONFEDERATE BOOKSTOREMy mouth was agape. I turned back and looked at the store and saw that, indeed, the store was called The Confederate Bookstore. The store’s name was written in very small letters on the side of the building. At that very moment I felt like marching back in there and confronting Bill as to why his store is named in honor of the Confederacy. Then I had another idea. Instead I decided to sleuth. Browsing the bookshelves of a store that sells used-books is a great pleasure of life. I decided to find out what I could find out.
QUITO ECUADOR
SOUTH AMERICA
BEST SELECTION
OF
BOOKS IN ENGLISH
IN SOUTH AMERICA
WE BUY AND SELL
BOOKS IN ALL CATEGORIES
[STORE HOURS]
[ADDRESS]
[PHONE NUMBER]
[EMAIL ADDRESS]
COURTESY OF
DR. WILLIAM GROCHOWSKI
BOOK SELLER
Here is what I found out: Each time I entered the store Bill was eating greasy food and / or drinking beer, or negotiating with someone to go and bring him greasy food and / or beer. I once overheard Bill asking someone in the middle of the afternoon if he wanted a beer. The man replied by asking what time he should come back in the evening. “No, I mean now,” Bill countered, “I drink on the job.”
Bill is a Catholic who comes from a Polish family in Chicago. He left the United States over five years ago and wound up buying this bookstore from its previous owner, a man from New Orleans who gave the store its name. When Bill bought the store he decided to keep the name.
I also found out that Bill is married to an Ecuadorian woman and is an absolutely voracious reader.
A Tale of Two Bookstores: Part Two
One day in late September while I was riding the bus to Mariscal Foch I got off one stop too late and wound up backtracking by foot down some roads I’d never walked before. Surprisingly, on Jose Calama, I passed a modest looking bookstore with a sign that simply said “English Bookstore.” I raced inside.
The bookstore was a mess. I am a connoisseur of bookstores and libraries. This was, without question, the most poorly organized bookstore I have ever experienced. With fiction I literally could not even find where “A” began. In English we all know that we read from left to right. When we organize authors alphabetically we put, for example, “Hemingway” to the left of “Hesse” and “Hesse” to the left of “Homes.” Within any given letter, the books at the English bookstore were organized correctly from left to right, but the letters themselves were arranged from right to left. In other words, if you were searching for Jane Austen and found they didn’t have any Austen books in stock, you would need to move to your left to see if they had any books by the Bronte sisters. This was disorienting.
Next, it is always a bad sign when you have use little white stickers, the type you might purchase at an office supply store, to indicate where one section ends and another begins. Just to the right of the counter of the English Bookstore was the most prominent shelf in the store. A maze of little white stickers ran vertically and horizontally separating “New Arrivals,” “Humor,” and “Rentals.” If you were to lie down on the floor, you would find the section with Latin American authors. It is unmarked.
Yes, I did just write “Rentals.” Mark decided that all the books that are in high demand should be available only for rent. This is about the stupidest business practice I can imagine. I would have to guess that a significant percentage of Mark’s business is derived from travelers who don’t want to be encumbered with having to return to this very same bookstore at a future time to return the book.
It gets worse. First, The English Bookstore grossly mis-categorized several books. Non-fiction books were stuck in with fiction. The travel section contained a copy of Palace Walk, a very successful novel. (To be fair, I did find one book mis-categorized at The Confederate Bookstore. It was a pre-publication version of Timothy Tyson’s work of non-fiction, Blood Done Sign My Name, the account of a race-based murder in North Carolina. Or, perhaps the fact this book was placed in the fiction section was not unintentional.)
It gets even worse. The English Bookstore is crammed into a room that also holds a small hearth. The fireplace is very much out-of-order, but it does create a nifty space to display a couple of books. Out of his entire inventory, Mark chose to display the book How to Make Love like a Porn Star by adult film star Jenna Jameson.
As depressing as the state of The English Bookstore is, books were not my prime motivation for walking into the store. Instead of Mark, a young man was working behind the counter. I needed to get the scoop, “What is the deal with that other bookstore just up the street?” I didn’t get much concrete information, only that the guy who ran the bookstore down the street was “a piece of work.” This was said while the guy working the counter made a circle around his ear with his index finger, implying that “piece of work” was synonymous with “crazy.” I discovered that many of The English Bookstore’s customers come in and fume about being offended by Bill. According to the guy working the counter Bill has alienated a whole lot of people; he refuses to send business to The English Bookstore if he doesn’t have something in stock; he refuses to acknowledge that there is even another English language bookstore in town; and that the respective owners have a feud going between them that has lasted many years.
Interlude: Can it really be that hard?
Perhaps what I am about to write is grossly naïve, but I just can’t imagine that developing and executing a business plan for an English Bookstore in Quito is that hard. The most important part is to understand your customer base. I would imagine your customer base would include (from larger in number to smaller):
1) English-speaking tourists of all ages, but especially younger backpackers.
2) English-speaking ex-pats who are living in Quito. These would include English teachers, embassy workers, those working with non-profit / service organizations, religious missionaries, etc.
3) Students doing study-abroad in a Spanish immersion program.
4) Tourists for whom English is a second language but buy books in English because they know they are not going to find a book in Swedish or Hungarian anywhere in Ecuador. Again, these would tend to be younger travelers.
What can we presume about the folks above? First, as the vast majority of the customers are either traveling or are staying for a limited amount of time, they don’t want to haul weight or to accumulate stuff. They are going to buy one book. Second, many of the people are on vacation and want something light they can read on a bus, a plane, or at the beach. Third, many of the people are traveling to have a cultural experience, an experience that is enhanced by reading Latin American authors or books about South America. Fourth, a significant number of the customers are young; it is worthwhile to find out what people in their 20s are reading. Fifth, the bookstore is a “different place” for travelers. When you step inside the door you have entered a small space where English is the dominant language. What other services might you offer in this different place? Sixth, by displaying the damn Confederate flag you alienate a whole lot of potential customers. Those from the United States who have chosen to come to Ecuador are especially likely to react negatively to the Confederate flag. (They are also not likely to want to travel around South America carrying the hardcover edition of a porn star’s memoirs.)
In other words, you are serving a niche. Find a way to stock lots of copies of books in high demand. (There is no reason not to have five copies of Che’s Motorcycle Diaries or Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude at any given time.) Institute a generous buyback program to obtain the copy of that book that someone bought at an airport bookstore and knocked off on the flight to Quito. Offer something that helps the store to stand apart for those people from English speaking countries.
Am I off the mark here?
A Conversation with Bill: Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
The time had come to spring the question on Bill about the Confederate flag. He already knew me a bit. I had been into his store to browse a half-dozen times and was always chipper and conversant. I asked him about books and made literary comments. Here are some excerpts from our conversation. [Note: the longer Bill talked, the more of a train wreck his comments became. At first I tried to listen. Then I found myself not wanting to argue for the reason that I couldn’t believe what was coming out of his mouth.
The Conversation begins…
T: So, I’ve got to ask you a question you must get a million times. How’d you decide on the name of the bookstore?
B: I’m a racist. [Long pause.] Actually, I bought the store from a Southerner from Louisiana and decided to keep the name. I like that it gets some people riled up. It makes the day more interesting.
T: How’s that working out for you?
B: It’s mostly college kids who think they know a lot but are really ignorant. It is fun to see them blow a fuse.
Bill on Barack Obama…
B: The only reason he won was that a lot of young people thought it would be cool to have a black president. [Thom wishes he said, “I’m sure that explains his 365 to 173 electoral college victory.”] Internationally Obama is a joke. The people in other countries love him but the leaders of other countries laugh at him behind his back. They all hated Bush but it didn’t matter because they feared Bush. Obama is a socialist and he is determined to transform the United States into a socialist nation.
T: Umm… I think there is a difference between socialism and regulated capitalism. A colleague of mine once said that a free market self-regulates like children playing in a sandbox self-regulate. The market needs adult supervision. I think Enron, Arthur Anderson, the Wall Street meltdown, and all the junk mortgages show that we need more regulations.
B: Nope, Obama is pushing for a total redistribution of wealth. Just check out the quotes from all the “czars” Obama has appointed.
T: I’m not familiar with those quotes. Where did you hear about them?
B: Glenn Beck… Obama is also eroding our freedoms?
T: Exactly which freedoms has he eroded?
B: Well, freedom of speech for starters. It is very subtle. Just look at how he is attacking FOX News, trying to get people not to watch them.
T: [Speechless.] [Thom wishes he had said, “I think that is the freedom of the press you are talking about, and your argument has completely confounded me and makes no sense whatsoever.]
Bill on Jews…
B: [After making several derogatory comments about Jews.] I’m an anti-Semite. But I’m also a Zionist. If we can get all of the Jews in one place we can keep an eye on them.
Bill on Religion…
B: There are a lot of groups active down here trying to push their religion on people. Jehovah’s Witnesses. Evangelicals. Mormons. I can’t stand people who try to push their religion on others. Someone once asked me who I prayed to and I answered, “The Virgin Mary.” The person then asked why I couldn’t pray to God directly but instead needed to pray through Mary. I told him that when I pray to the Virgin Mary I am praying to God. I believe God is a woman. Plus, the Hail Mary is shorter than the Our Father…. I’m a Roman Catholic. We’re a drinking, f***ing religion.
[Thom wishes he said, “You should put that on a T-Shirt.”]
Bill on Ecuadorians…
The people in this country are ignorant. They are like savages. They throw their trash on the side of the road. They foul their own land.
Bill on Hospitality…
[After a man brought him a 6-pack of beer.]
B: Hey, want a beer?
T: No thanks, I’ll probably have one later on tonight.
[Thom wishes he said, “Sorry, I don’t drink when I’m not working.”]
Bill on The English Bookstore…
They’re bad people. The owner stabbed me in the back. He hung around my store for years pretending to be my friend, took what he learned, and went and started his own store down the street.
I should also mention that Bill managed to slip in the N-word and the anti-gay F-word into the conversation. I have not put the above excerpts of our conversation in quotation marks because I can’t guarantee it is what was said word-for-word. Rather, the words above accurately represent the content of parts of our conversation.
A Conversation with Mark: Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
The next day I paid a visit to The English Bookstore and paid a visit to Mark. (The last time I was in the shop I had spotted a 2003 novel by Lucy Ellman, a book that I never knew existed. I read her first three novels for fun in college.) I introduced myself to Mark, a tall Englishman with a silver head of hair. I made small talk with him for about 10 minutes. He announced he was stepping outside for a smoke but that I should feel free to browse the shop.
Instead, I stepped near the entrance and continued the conversation, bringing up the subject of the Confederate Bookstore. Here are some of the things that Mark told me:
∙ Mark told me that he finds Bill’s political views insane and his racism intolerable. He told me that he receives a constant stream of customers who complain about Bill’s boorish behavior. According to Mark, Bill snaps at his customers. Supposedly, one of Bill’s customers asked him if he knew of a camera shop in the area and Bill responded, “Do I look like the F***ing Yellow Pages?” Apparently, Bill also delights in shocking his customers with racist comments. A recent customer reported that Bill referred to Obama as, “that floppy-eared n****r.” [For the record, I never witnessed Bill verbally abuse any of his customers.]
∙ Mark confessed that he doesn’t run his business very well. He said that Bill knows a lot more about books than he does. “I think that Bill likes books more than he likes people.” Mark also told me that he charges far more for books than Bill (about twice as much, in fact.) Mark told me about all his problems navigating customs in order to import books.
∙ Mark showed me his wall display of bookmarks from bookstores all over the world. It included a bookmark from The Confederate Bookstore, only the bookmark was covered with pen-drawings of little swastikas and other Third Reich symbols. Above Bill’s name was written “BOOK NAZI.”
∙ Mark told me that Bill is not a doctor in anything. When he first moved to Ecuador he got a certificate for teaching English and then started putting “Dr.” before his name. Mark also said that Bill left the United States and moved to Ecuador to beat $30,000 in debts.
∙ Mark proved himself to have a penchant for exaggeration. Towards the end of our conversation, Mark was talking about how dangerous Quito is. Mark says that 70% of his customers mention being either robbed or assaulted.
∙ Mark also had disparaging things to say about Ecuadorians. He said that Ecuadorians are dishonest, anti-social, and lazy. He said the main problem with this country is that people are lazy and don’t work hard. He compared Ecuadorians to the Colombians who are friendly and industrious.
∙ Mark also was opposed to and troubled by Ecuador’s embrace of socialism.
Conclusion
So I never did find out what truly lay at the heart of the hatred between the rival bookstore owners on Jose Calama Street in Quito, Ecuador in South America. I think I was most shocked by the patronizing, condescending, and infantilizing remarks made by both Mark and Bill about the people of the country in which they both live. I’m also quite surprised by the rampant dysfunction which both owners demonstrate in the operation of their businesses.
