Posted on 06/01/2020 5:26:07 AM PDT by gattaca
Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's were legendary among the community of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery readers—and now they're gone.
Venerable Minneapolis science fiction and fantasy bookstore Uncle Hugo’s and its sister store in the same building, Uncle Edgar’s, which specialized in mysteries, were both burned to ruins last Friday night by rioters.
The store took its name from two major awards in the genre fields, science fiction’s Hugo awards, and mysteries Edgar’s. Independent bookstores are a threatened American institution, and Uncle Hugo’s was considered a flagship operation. Owner Don Blyly was noted for his ability to adapt to modern bookselling conditions and serve an audience of devoted genre readers. With most independent book shops, the margins are low and often owners are in the business as much for love as for money. For Don Blyly, it doesn’t matter anymore.
The books are burned. His shop is gone.
“There was a call from the security company around 3:30 this morning that the motion detector was showing somebody in the building. I threw on clothes and headed over there,” said Blyly in an email. “When I was 2 blocks away, I received a call that the smoke detectors were showing smoke in the store. Every single building on both sides of Chicago was blazing and dozens of people dancing around.”
Uncle Hugo’s was located at 2864 Chicago Avenue, in Minneapolis. Blyly pulled into the parking lot belonging to the dentist office next door to his shop. Flames were already leaping out the front windows of the Uncle Hugo’s side of the store.
“It looked to me like they had broken every window on the front of the Uncles and then squirted accelerant through each broken window. It looked hopeless to me, but I went around to the back door to see if I could get to a fire extinguisher. As soon as I opened the back door a wave of very thick black smoke poured out, so I quickly closed the door again.”
Blyly then heroically rushed over to the nextdoor office building. It’s garage-door style side entrance had been opened and he entered to try to extinguish any fire. He made it to an inside break room, but when he opened a door to the main clinic, smoke poured out and he had to evacuate. Outside, he observed that his own store was entirely engulfed in flames. He turned his attention to getting away from the area.
“Some of the rioters were busy breaking every pane of glass in the transit hub,” Blyly continued. “The former Sheraton did not seem to be on fire yet, and there were guests who were staying there. It looked like somebody may have broken a window on the first floor along Chicago and started a fire, but it could have just been a reflection of the flames from the Uncles.”
The Uncles is how Blyly refers to his bookstore.
“I didn’t notice anything going on yet at the Global Marketplace, but the rioters were headed in that direction. There is no way a mere fire could bring that building down, but it could wipe out all of those businesses, and there are hundreds of people who live above the Global Marketplace who could be trapped by the smoke.”
Blyly considered several possible exit routes.
“Since Chicago Avenue was full of dancing rioters, broken glass, and flaming debris, I went down the alley and took Lake Street home. There were blocks of Lake Street where every building was blazing. No sign of any cops, national guard troops, or any help.”
Blyly expressed doubts that insurance would cover his loss. “I’m pretty sure the insurance policy excludes damage from a civil insurrection, so I suspect I won’t get a cent for either the building or the contents.”
Uncle Hugo’s was known in the often politically contentious science fiction community as a place where good books and good storytelling was prized above all else. Blyly took a decidedly nonpartisan stance when it came to what he sold. The physical store supplied a wide mailing list as well, with often hard to find first and special editions of books.
Author-signed copies, particularly first editions, were an Uncles specialty. Everything was destroyed by the rioters’ firebombing of the establishment. As of Saturday morning, the Uncles appeared entirely gutted, and lay a smoldering ruin. Countless specialty books, priceless to readers and collectors, had been burned to crisps and cinders.
There are already fundraising efforts underway, and Blyly has the pluck to rebuild given funds and the opportunity, but a neighborhood institution like Uncle Hugo’s is difficult to replace under any circumstances.
We all know who burned Uncle Hugo’s. It wasn’t “Nazis,” or the cops in some kind of conspiracy to cast blame. It was the Minneapolis rioters. Book-burning scum, in other words. Or, as my wife reminds me, misguided children of God for whom we should pray.
The political moral to draw is obvious and banal. But when a cultural institution like a good bookstore is burned, the damage goes beyond the physical. It is not really possible to merely clean up and rebuild, as you might a Target or a police station. The bustle of the street, the fabric of the city itself, is damaged. The destruction of a bookstore hurts people’s souls, even if they don’t realize this.
“A city cannot be a work of art,” Jane Jacobs writes in her seminal book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” By this she means that a city is not like a statue. It is an unplanned web, a crazy network of individuals doing productive, artistic, crazy, and interesting things, all at once. It pulsates with life and change in some areas, accretes tradition or staleness, or both, in others. It’s never the same.
The hustle and bustle of the street, the shops and restaurants and churches and halfway houses and all the rest engender this hustle and bustle. When you burn such places down (or, as was Jacobs’ concern, plough them under with ill-conceived top-down urban projects), you are not clearing for renewal. You are destroying the very possibility for growth and change in a community. You are killing hope.
“The economic value of new buildings in replaceable in cities,” Jacobs writes. “But the economic value of old buildings is irreplaceable at will. It is created by time. This economic requisite for diversity is a requisite that vital city neighborhoods can only inherit, and then sustain over the years.”
Cities stripped of places like Uncle Hugo’s become pits of despair, barbarism, and danger because the businesses are gone and buildings are burned. Don Blyly may rebuild with our help.
But no amount of money or good wishes after the fact can renew a city that has stood by and allowed its own heart to be ripped out. Or worse, that rips out its own heart and calls it justice.
As he says “let my building burn” I am going to wonder if his insurance will even cover this. He seems content with the situation.
>> Work boots are also safe from being looted.
Jogging boots?
>>there’s another well-known bookstore that could be a target...Powell’s Books in Portland, OR.
I’ve never been to Powell’s and it’s been years since I’ve made a purchase but I did but quite a bit from them online and they seemed to have a lot of new copies of out of print books.
Destructive rioting never makes sense, but race agitators like Gayle King and the Dems just love it.
The whole article puts to rest a lot of myths from the Left about the Black Panthers. Bobby Seale may have represented a non-racist and non-violent faction of the Panthers but he is upfront about what the other key members said and did.
They weren’t victimized by the police. Even when he tries to make excuses for Huey Newton, he says that Huey went for the officer’s gun. That will get you shot.
Afrofuturism has existed in occasional works for a long time—but in modern science fiction it has turned into a ridiculous mantra.
I think we all have a pretty good idea what the future of Africa looks like—and it will not be pretty.
btw I am currently reading one of the classics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men
The book is available online here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Last_and_First_Men.pdf
It is interesting that the Wikipedia editors have not chosen to attack it and Amazon has not tried to ban it—at some point some leftist professor will make a career out of calling it racist/sexist etc....
We are watching the death of American cities. I doubt many businesses will return. There will be an exodus from cities. People who can afford to leave will leave. They have already been doing it because of high taxes. For those that have not left, what did those taxes buy? We see the abject failure of city cops to protect businesses. The cops are being ordered to let things burn. The cops are being ordered to harass businesses because of a hoax flu. Cities are a failed police state where the good guys are persecuted and the bad guys are ignored. To hell with them.
The owner of Cadillac Pawn on Lake Street did that on Thursday night, he’s now facing murder charges. Minnesota is NOT a stand your ground state.
Isn’t that what Nazis do? Burn books.
I better to tried by 12 then carried out by 6
This will hasten the downfall of a wide variety of brick and mortar businesses.
If the police and the business owners are not allowed to protect property, the insurance companies will refuse to insure the property at affordable rates.
I’ve only read a little of Arthur C. Clarke (some background/alternate materials on 2001 and Childhood’s End for school).
In Childhood’s End as I recall, the aliens who come to Earth put white people in charge of some African government because they are the minority there. But by the end of the novel nothing really exists anyhow, I seem to recall the planet transmorphing into some kind of 2001-ish star child (or star children). I think that the aliens also could show a window to the past to people and it was used to “expose” the life of Christ as “false”.
Then again I don’t know who could hold up Arthur C. Clarke as a paragon of virtue since he’s been accused of being a globetrotting sex tourist/pederast.
>>We are watching the death of American cities. I doubt many businesses will return. There will be an exodus from cities. People who can afford to leave will leave. They have already been doing it because of high taxes. For those that have not left, what did those taxes buy?
I saw book collector stores move out of town decades ago as their owners migrated to the rural areas of the state. There was a network of book searches that bookstores would do so their clients could still buy books from them, they were able to avoid skyrocketing rents/taxes and live a relaxed bucolic life.
Minneapolis Rioters Burned One Of America’s Most Beloved Independent Bookstores To The Ground
I can see that. They probably didn’t understand that books contain knowledge.
These ignorants don’t read or value anything of beauty.
The business owners will try. But if all police departments have become as politically correct as the ones in very Republican Scottsdale, AZ Saturday night, where officers directly told downtown business owners they were not obligated to defend property and then let the mob loot millions in inventory from the largest mall in the Southwest - when a few well-placed rounds of pepper spray could have knocked them down like gnats - then insurers will simply walk away.
It's hard to conclude anything other than that collectivist political operatives have taken control of this police department - and many others around the country.
Obama did this to the military, marriage and the Boy Scouts all at once. Look for statues, historical homes of meaning, libraries and other cherished buildings to go up in flames. Anything to do with decency and American history.
The assault on American traditions includes renaming of airports. I was surprised to learn that recently Lindbergh Field, San Diego's airport, was quietly renamed San Diego International Airport and they replaced the mural honoring Charles Lindbergh, who took off from this airport in 1927 on his historic flight that would end up in Paris.
Up in Los Angeles, the Bob Hope Airport has reverted to its old name, the Burbank Airport. And there's a movement to rename the John Wayne Airport in Orange County and McCarran Field, named for Sen. Pat McCarran (D-Nev.), the bane of Soviet spies, in Las Vegas.
You know, when you pay protection money to the Mob, I'm pretty sure you do get protection. Petty crooks aren't going to harass your business because they don't want bigger crooks messing them up.
But it's different when you pay protection money (taxes) to the government. They don't care what happens to you.
There’s a video somewhere on youtube that shows a news reporter driving through the outskirts of Downtown Minneapolis on Saturday night showing many businesses being guarded by armed owners, friends and family.
Thank single mommies and pubic school teachers for this.
They’ve been the proggie, first-line indoctrinators of American children for decades.
Now, we taste the very bitter fruits of their ways.
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