MYSTERIOUS DUST FROM SPACE

I was standing at Astor Place last week, just near the cube and this wiry old-New York type walks up to me and says my name.

It's Chris Santana. We took a life-changing 6-months-every-other-weekend hypnosis training together back in 2011, when we both lived in downtown Portland. We used to wander together, though I wasn't calling it that back then. We lost touch in 2014.

When he walked up on me, I was just giving my welcome spiel to this group of brave souls who signed up to walk around the Village with me, so Chris and I just exchanged a hug and a few words and a promise to catch up.

Yesterday that finally happened. I spent a few hours with him at his bookshop.

3 years ago Santana started a book stall along the north wall of Cooper Union. He's is a proponent of the Urantia Book, and he wanted to share that with people, and the bookshop kind of grew up around that.

This corner, where Astor Place hits 3rd Ave and becomes St. Marks, gets a constant stream of foot traffic featuring some of the city's brightest heads. And the Bookman's got books. Great books. Classic books.

So people stop and look.

And when they express interest in something, Santana makes them offer him a reasonable amount of money. Sometimes he counters. Sometimes he gets more than he expected. It's beautiful theater.

Santana is a wild man. He's probably pushing 60, but his body is wiry and strong. He dresses well, talks fast, and has far more energy than most men half his age. He's a fucking dynamo.

His book shop is a beautiful little barnacle on the prow of Cooper Union.

He can pack the whole thing into a couple of crates - which he locks up nearby and leaves securely on the street - but when he unfurls it, it's racks of eye-catching, high-quality books, hand-made signs and a little table with two chairs. It's an absolute freak magnet.

A guy with a Este es Mi Cielo tattooed in red on his forehead came by and offered Chris some web services. He was a nice guy, and honestly, I dig the sentiment.

We met a video editor at The Daily Mail and I told him about Herman & Chomsky's Propaganda Model.

Two friends (one from Jackson Heights and one from Crown Heights) picked up a book called The Drunken Tourist. Chris sold it to them, then told them after they bought it that he wrote it. He signed it for them (using my pen).

An anarchist publisher came by on an old blue 10-speed, dropped the bike on the sidewalk, sold Santana a few more copies of his latest issue, then took off again (J+B you know him).

A Russian-American woman stopped by on her way from her spot in Gramercy to her chess lesson in Union Square. We talked for awhile and she borrowed some of Chris's words for a film scrriiiiippppttttt. And you know what they say about us writers. We thieves. She ALSO bought Chris's book AND she'd just bought this book below a few mins before!

Santana sold TWO copies of his own book in 20 mins WITHOUT telling people he was the author until after the fact. Amazing. The bookshop brings a huge burst of life to an otherwise interstitial corner. I really love what he's doing.

Hoping he's going to take me with him on some of his upcoming book-hunts. It is not lost on me that he has this beautiful wandering process at the heart of his business.

Go talk to him if you're in the area. He's usually out in the afternoons, when it's sunny and reasonably warm. Tell him we're friends.

You know I love all these random little interactions with the beautiful people of New York, but my favorite part

is when Santana played me the opening number for the Broadway musical that he's written about the bookshop.

It's called The Bookman of Astor Place.

He's started recording, and he played me the opening number. He's a great, gritty singer, and the music is uplifting, and the sun was out, and the people were shuttling past, and Chris was slinging books in front of me, while also singing in my ear. It was a beautiful moment. I could see the musical coming to life. I hope he gets to produce it. A musical about an unlicensed book stall at Astor Place will be lit.

The wander continues to provide. I am delighted to be reconnected to my old friend, especially at Astor Place, which has been an important crossroads on Manahatta even before New York. It used to be known as Kintecoying, the Crossroads of Three Nations, where the trails of the 3 Lenape groups that shared the island came together, and where they met and traded and mingled.

May Manhattan ever be a place where collects the mysterious dust from space.