Midnight Special was a great independent radical bookstore in the People's Republic of Santa Monica. Before they were on the outdoor mall in Santa Monica a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean, they were in Venice. The Venice store was where I bought all the marxist-leninist-maoist-trotskyist-libertarian communist rags of the 70's and 80's.
There still is a great newstand off Hollywood Blvd. w/ dozens of foreign and domestic rad left/marxist/socialist journals and newspapers. When I was a teenager I felt like Woody Allen in Annie Hall where he buys his porn, ("Yes, I'll take the Commentary, The Nation...and , 'Big Jugs, ' and , "Discipline Daddy, '") when I'd buy my Blue Boy along w/ Marxist Perspectives and Monthly Review at that newsstand.
http://www.msbooks.com/the_end.html May 7, 2004
Last year, well over 1000 of you gave us so much money, so much of your time and so much heart, to make sure we could reopen after 8 months in storage. Unfortunately, the delay was too great and our debts grew with the delays. Only local outlets of major chains can afford the losses that come with opening stores; even though our sales were steadily growing, it was not fast enough to keep us going until we could sustain ourselves.
Therefore, it is with so much sadness and even much anger that we announce we are closing the Midnight Special Bookstore. We know how much you have given to us; we want you to know how hard we tried and how long we worked to keep our doors open. We also want you to know how sincerely we will miss your comments, complaints, support, events, books, small talk, jokes, ideas; you have been our community...our daily life, for 34 years.... The Twilight of Midnight Special http://www.smmirror.com/volume5/issue48/the_twilight_of.asp http://www.lavoice.org/article104.html
-- Michael Pugliese