Do You Know The Way To San Mateo

Matthew Kelly, chef/owner at Vin Rouge, is going to be joining the large number of Durham restaurateurs who've opened places downtown.  His Spanish restaurant, Mateo, will be going in the building formerly occupied by the Book Exchange [sniffle].  I was sad to see the Book Ex close, but I'm glad to see the building come to good use.  

Matt had been relatively quiet about the planned restaurant, so I'd kept my mouth shut.  But I might as well say something, as there's an article in the N&O:

"Vin Rouge owner plans Spanish eatery"

Comments

[coozledad]

I used to work at the Book Ex. I thought even then it would make a good restaurant, once they got rid of those collie-sized rats that swam in the crawlspace.

[Joe Eater]

I guess restaurants can't usually have cats, but did the Book Ex? I can't remember. When I Was in New Orleans, it seemed like every used bookstore I went in (mostly in the Vieux Carré, I guess?) had a cat. I thought it was odd, until I realized it was probably for rodent control.

[coozledad]

Management at the Book Ex generally frowned upon living creatures. You may not have been aware of this, but in the room behind the counter where you, the customer, were paying for your purchase, there was a loaded 12 gauge Mossberg pump action at hand to discourage book thieves, or establish control over a mob of impatient students, or something. Once they showed it to me, I was always worried about it falling over and blowing pieces of the sales staff into the dollar-a-book section.
I never saw the rats first hand, but other salespeople swore they saw them swimming in the flooded area beneath the building.
There was a big fire at Kimbrell's furniture next door in 1984? That destroyed a huge number of books.
Some had been placed on the floor over a disused built-in bathroom not too far from the sales counter. I climbed up there one day to sweep and found some pretty valuable books. Some were early printings of Civil War Daguerrotypes that must have been published as soon as rotogravure was developed. There was a book of religious pro-slavery arguments collected in one handy volume for the busy plantation owner and published on the eve of the South putting its toe on the trigger.

There were also shelves upon shelves of lurid cheap novels from the 40's and 50's that management collected for the sole purpose of censorship. They were probably worth a small fortune.
It was a weird place to work.

[Joe Eater]

coozledad: You know, if the Book Ex had kept up with all that stock & actually sold it, maybe they'd still be in business. And maybe they should have displayed the shotgun as local flavor. I can hardly imagine, say, the Regulator or the bookstore I used to work in displaying a shotgun, and I'm certain the big chains wouldn't. :)

By the way, thanks for the link to this post.