From hardship to bookselling

8:19

and I had

8:19

like an Internet magazine covering film

8:21

and music and that sort of tanked I

8:23

tried to get a job a few places but

8:25

nobody would really hire me and so I

8:27

just I lived on welfare and food stamps

8:29

and I had sort of an early like midlife

8:32

crisis where I was just like man I'm a

8:34

loser

8:35

I'm not doing anything with my life I

8:37

gotta get serious about this it's gonna

8:39

find something that that I can really

8:41

focus on and really love and really get

8:43

behind you know I've always been a

8:45

writer and a reader and said I thought

8:48

well try books

8:49

[Music]

8:50

eBay was just getting started so I had

8:53

learned how to use that so I started

8:54

doing that just from my apartment this

8:57

tiny little studio apartment but this

8:59

one guy that that I knew his friend of

9:01

mine he kept hassling me to open up a

9:03

store for a couple of years really

9:05

until finally I relented and was like

9:07

all right just there's a space open up

9:09

across the street from where I live and

9:12

it was busy from the first day we opened

9:14

our doors

9:21

I created this place as as somewhere

9:24

that I would want to hang out all the

9:25

time you know I was like a huge living

9:27

room for me so it seems to have worked

9:30

for a lot of other people too so they

9:31

they kind of see it as their their home

9:34

away from home too you know I definitely

9:36

thing the bookstore has changed other

9:38

people's lives