geekyWhat's that? You don't have any local independent shops? Well, have no fear! There are, as always, options.
If you're looking for reading material, and you don't have a local bookstore, Berkeley's Other Change of Hobbit and San Francisco's Borderlands Books both do mail order and fill special requests. These are my local stores, and I love them dearly. Plus, they have cats to feed. You wouldn't want to let the kitties go hungry, would you? Think of the kitties! (Two major advantages of the independent bookstore: they often have cats, and they often have bathrooms. If you don't think this is an advantage, you've never needed to pee while in downtown San Francisco.)
If you're looking for some exotic new musical strains to delight your eardrums and confuse your iTunes categories, I can recommend some fun things. Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff, for example, provide some truly awesome offerings, ranging from hysterical parody (Aliens Ate My Homework, Retro Rocket Science) to serious and thoughtful original work (Manhattan Sleeps, Moebius Street). I recommend them hugely, and not just because Jeff was the engineer on my latest album. My beloved Vixy and Tony have a rockin' album of their own—I'm even on it!—and I can't really recommend Thirteen highly enough. And of course, there's SJ Tucker, whose works are mythic and tangled and complex and funny and altogether lovely.
What bits of independent awesome do you know about and want to share? Stores? Musicians? Comic book artists? Share, and enlighten the world!
May 1 2009, 22:11:47 UTC 8 years ago
May 2 2009, 17:21:50 UTC 8 years ago