The Writer's Block Bookstore: a sort of review.
The Writer's Block Bookstore: a sort of review.
I had a few items on my checklist for my recent trip to Las Vegas. One of them was to visit the Writer’s Block, an independent bookstore that’s on the edge of a Vegas arts district that I’m just beginning to explore over my recent trips to the desert.
The Arts District in Vegas is located between the world famous Las Vegas Strip and the equally raucous Fremont Street in the old downtown area. There’s a bus called ‘the Deuce’ that runs on a loop down the Strip to Fremont St that stops in the Arts District. You can get a daily pass for $8 and a two day pass at a discount. You can buy the pass on an app on your smartphone. Easy peezy and not too greasy.
But like all Dan Denton adventures, it ain’t never quite point A to point B, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
I planned to check out the bookstore, and walk around the Arts District a little bit on Friday, the first full day of my visit in the city. But like every day in my now full-time writer life, I got stoned, and spent too much time drinking too much coffee in the morning, and I ended up sitting in a nice upscale casino lounge, where I could chain smoke cigarettes and write. So I did, until well into the afternoon, and I regret not one single minute of it.
I collected myself at 3pm, when my stoner self and my writer self met out front of the Horseshoe to smoke a joint with the rest of me. We recalculated our daily plans, just like we find ourselves doing almost every Friday, and everyday is Friday if you know what I mean. I bought my bus pass on the phone app, went up to my room and took my second shower of the day, and with fresh boxers and just showered alertness I hit the Strip to catch the Deuce. It was 112 degrees and 4pm.
I stood just inside the doors of the Paris Casino, enjoying the luxury of their air conditioning, while just barely being able to keep an eye on the bus stop Strip side, which lay 150 yards from my cool solo bus bench. That view and a tracker on the bus app told me when to head out into the oven of the July desert to catch my desired bus ride.
I needn’t have worried. There is major road construction in Vegas right now, to prepare for an upcoming formula one road race that sounds pretty epic, but sure makes a major pain in the ass for the half million tourists trying to move around and play more tourist. Because of the construction, traffic moved like a first of the month check in the mail when it’s only the 20th and you’re already busted broke. So, all the busses were five minutes later to every stop and I think it was the 2:15 bus I caught at 4:15pm. It took 10 minutes that the bus schedule couldn’t afford to get every one on and off at every stop, on every block of the strip, and the Deuce was packed tighter than a good Backwoods blunt, but not nearly as enjoyable.
I say this as a reporter of events, and with absolutely no personal flavoring or judgement. But the Deuce bus in Vegas is a double decker city bus that’s full of tourists from all over planet Earth, sprinkled with service workers coming and leaving work, and invariably features a handful of homeless folks. The diversity of scents and body odors on a hot bus that’s fighting and failing to cool faster than we can sweat, that diversity is almost too overwhelming for my keen and sensitive sense of smell. My breathing ability was at about 60 % capacity, and I couldn’t wait to exit that sardine can, back out onto the oven baked sidewalks. My anxiety levels in shoulder to shoulder packed confined spaces aren’t great on good days, and this was a better than good day, but I was still happy to find myself alone for blocks, the only tourist dumb enough to take a two mile trek to visit a bookstore while in Sin City.
My walk tested my middle age endurance levels. A two mile walk in a 112 degree desert is not the same two mile walk on an 80 degree day in Toledo. Within two blocks and six minutes my large bottle of $6 water I got at a highway robbery Casino inconvenience mart was already room temperature, and room temperature was hotter than 98.6 human degrees, and almost, but not quite hot enough to boil water. It just felt that way.
It’s funny. They always say the desert heat is different than the Midwest humidity and heat, and they’re right. Whomever they are anyway. But 112 degrees in a desert is still 112 degrees, no matter who or what they say. I noticed that I never broke a sweat on any of my desert walks, except in my shorts, where I noticed so much sweat that I took three showers everyday I was in Vegas, and ran out of boxer briefs and had to buy some for double the price of the same boxers I always buy in Toledo. But these were emergency circumstances, and worthy of emergency funds. No matter how tough I think I am, I’m certainly smart enough to know better than to wrestle any kind of heat in anything less than fresh support where freshness matters most.
The sun is so close and hot in the desert that it constantly burned through my SPF 50 sunblock, sunblock that I never need to wear on summer walks back home, but I damn sure needed to spray on my exposed skin every hour on the hour while out in cactus land.
My walk led me past a couple of tattoo shops, some breathtaking murals, and equally impressive street graffiti art. I walked past the famous Las Vegas pawn shop, the one that has a TV show, and they were already closed for tourists and only had a night window open at 5:30 in the evening. The well known toy store that pawn shop made famous was still open as I walked past that, too, and finally limped my way into the Writer’s Block bookstore, the only independently owned bookstore in Las Vegas. I noted with mischievous glee that it sits across from a building labeled “Nevada Legal Services.” Take that how you will.
The Writer’s Block is a newer and bigger version of its former self, and the new location is a must see for any level of book lover. Their website told me pre-visit, that they partnered with a local publishing group to sponsor 2-4 week long writer’s residencies, but you can’t apply for them. You have to be nominated by their sponsors and partners, like Submittable, the Asian American Writer’s Workshop, Electric Lit, Words Without Borders, and other acclaimed literary pillars. The Writer’s Block also offers a variety of children’s and youth writing workshops, the kind of arts programs that I love to support.
I was immediately disappointed to find out that the coffee shop in the bookstore closes at 4pm on Fridays, three hours earlier than the store, and I’m not complaining, but I was pretty stoked about finding a book, and flipping through it surrounded by other book lovers, and casually sipping something cold and espresso’ed while recovering from my death defying 50 minute urban desert hike. That fantasy was stripped away, but that loss was greatly compensated by the beauty of a damn good indie bookstore.
The store is newer, and crisp in its layout. There’s no dusty paperbacks long forgotten to dig through. Those kinds of bookstores are beautiful in their own ways, but The Writer’s Block is clean and well lit with natural lighting and well placed and laid out bookshelves that house maybe 10,000 books or more. It’s big for an indie bookstore. All on one level, and they have some connection there with the Audubon Society and something to do with adopting an artificial bird. The store is ornate in its housing of hundreds of fake stuffed birds of all manner of species, all hanging from the ceiling. Whatever the deal with the birds, it adds a unique and appealing vibe to their bookselling.
The store also had a dozen cardboard cutouts of famous writers, so that when you turned another corner there was James Baldwin in his fleece lined coat, black framed spectacles, holding a cigarette and looking badder than a motherfucker. Any bookstore parading James Baldwin gets extra points in my reviews. They’re mine and I make the rules, and perhaps no other author opened my eyes to a different America than than the one I saw, more than James Baldwin. I love that guy and his work.
My mischievous self found it notable that the cardboard cut out of Ben Franklin was across the store and in different sections than the cut out of Frederick Douglass. The work of those two might have come from the same era, but one wrote about life as a slave in such a poetic manner that his work will forever be banned in redneckville, Florida, and the other owned slaves and is hailed as a founding hero in Florida. You do the math. They haven’t banned that yet. I tell you that with far more judgement than I’ve written here, but none of that judgement is directed at The Writer’s Block, who is simply doing a good job as a bookseller, and an innocent bystander in this sort of review. I better get back to telling you how cool they are, and why they should be on your next Vegas checklist, too.
Their book selection is big, rich, and diverse. Their poetry selection has 10 whole bookshelves in a front featured cubby hole room all by itself. My heart was in poet heaven, as I debated buying a half dozen poetry collections that would have sang with angelic voices in my battered blue collar library. If not in my new life of being an artist writing on a tight budget, and intending to move into a travel trailer, a tiny house on wheels, I would have blown a few hundred bucks I don’t have to fill another shelf I don’t have for a slew of new books. But after a casual hour of browsing a bookseller collection that made my bibliophile self feel like I was home for a while, I reluctantly settled on one book that I found there that I absolutely couldn’t leave without. I found a collectors edition of a definitive 500 plus page book, full of hundreds of color photos and stories of the life and work of one of my most beloved living artists, the Chinese legend Ai WeiWei. Time and time again, Ai WeiWei has put his freedom and life on the line, to make the most moving and thought provoking art of our generation, and I had to have this book full of all his work. I’ve looked at it with love and began to read it a little everyday since, and it’s already given me my $35 spent and so much more. If you ain’t hip to Ai WeiWei, hang up your phone as soon as we’re done talking here, and go look him up. What a treasure of an artist.
When I logged out of the nirvana of a 60 minute visit to one of my new favorite bookstores, I had a great conversation with two of the bookstore staff, and they filled me in on some workshops and writing programs, and we talked books for a bit. In the end, they told me about one of their program partners, an organization called Poetry Promise, Inc. and they told me how to get in touch with them, and later I found myself emailing back and forth with the Las Vegas Poet Laureate. Life is funny that way.
I left the Writer’s Block floating on good book high vibes, and back out into the July oven that is Southern Nevada. Near the entrance of the bookstore and coffee shop sits a repainted antique letterpress, and of all places, that press is from Cleveland, OH. Just another sign of affirmation that I was in the right place in life.
The walk back to the Deuce bus stop was not a fun one, and I was hot, tired and cranky and already running out of water again. I debated a $10 tattoo. A staple in the Vegas Arts District, but I had to pee, and find more cold water, a vicious but necessary cycle for an intrepid desert adventurer.
The Deuce bus was 30 minutes late, and crowded with 50 people on one street corner waiting for their ride. The diversity of socio-economic varieties on display there is unrivaled but in maybe a handful of places on planet Earth. A couple of tourists were getting anxious about three homeless looking street folks that were arguing about shared cigarettes when a Lamborghini and a Ferrari raced past us.
The bus finally got there, and I found a space to stand in, wedged shoulder to shoulder amongst that socio-economic diversity. Lucky for me, I stood somewhere away from the bottom of that pile of humans riding the bus. Somewhere still above the bottom of my own homelessness in my 20’s, but rarely far enough away from it to feel any safety and security. With a book under one arm and most of my homeless addict demons still locked away in some hall closet of my brain, I wasn’t anywhere near the top, but I was grateful for my new book, and a new bookstore found.
I hope you’ll add The Writer’s Block bookstore to your to do list next time you’re in Sin City. If you love books, you’ll love them. Tell ‘em your favorite writer Dan Denton sent you. They won’t know who the hell I am, but I’ve always dreamed someone would say it.
Gotta go. Got books to read and other words to burn. Hope you’re digging this blue collar travelogue. More coming soon.
a mural in the arts district
a world famous pawn shop
I’m a sucker for old classic signs, and they’re everywhere in Vegas
The entrance to the Writer’s Block Bookstore
James Baldwin greets you near the entrance to the bookstore
English writer George Eliot standing in the middle of the store. Note the birds hanging from the ceiling
Frederick Douglass whose writing should be required reading in every American high school
They got an old press from Cleveland outside the bookstore in Vegas!