Gig # 2

FreeBird Books
123 Columbia Street
Brooklyn, New York


What a brilliant little bookstore. It’s in the Red Hook bit of Brooklyn, and it faces out onto the river and you can see the Manhattan skyline from the front window. Inside, it is the kind of place where the books jump out of the shelves at you and you end up with something in your hand that you never knew existed but might have been written specifically for you.

The evening featured two very young talented writers, Nikki Westfall and Leslie Campisi, and me with my show and tell. I think it was a good mix, one of those perfectly balanced plates with dorade, rice and asparagus arranged all photogenically with a slice of lemon. I think I was the asparagus.

What really impressed me were the people who came. Amy Sather, an old friend from Paris who was actually supposed to be in the book until her ex-fiancee ordered me to bump her out. (Long story.) Leah Hayes, who edited the music section of Kilometer Zero Issue # 3 and showed divine taste and inspiration in doing so. Oliver, one of the founders of Atlantis Books in Greece, and his lovely partner Ryan, who lived at the bookstore in the summer of 2004 and travelled with George to the south of France. Then, there were all these Shakespeare people who I had briefly crossed or barely missed while in Paris and filled me with me with their memories of the bookstore, our art squat, and that general scene. I felt incredibly spoiled and lucky to have everybody there and I wish I had bought everybody a drink but instead Amy bought me a bourbon and that was the perfect finish to the evening.