Los Angeles Best "Curated" Bookstore - Family Los Angeles - Best Of Los Angeles

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Comments (0) Best "Curated" Bookstore - 2011

Family Los Angeles

436 N. Fairfax Ave.

Los Angeles, CA 90036

323-782-9221

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I say this as a semiprofessional curator myself, but there's something fantastically pretentious about "a curated bookstore." Owned by Orthodox Fairfax land barons the Harkham brothers, Family Los Angeles is just such a bookstore. Affectations aside, it's not the place one goes to discover the unusual in the stacks — it's more of a temple to all the literary and art movements that affected underground culture, whilst trying to intuit the present one. But of course, being "in the know" is perilously close to becoming the mainstream arbiters of tastes that the underground sprang up to replace. When your friends are homeless and photocopying zines it's one thing, but when the featured book is Mike Mills' drawings for his "quirky" mainstream movie, it's sort of another. But no scene likes a hater, so just head there, dig in and afterward retire to a gourmet coffee shop (Intelligentsia, maybe), your copy of Robert Walser or Herman Hesse displayed not too prominently on the cafe table next to your pack of American Spirits. 436 N. Fairfax Ave., Mid-City. (323) 782-9221, familylosangeles.com.

—Andrew Berardini

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4 comments

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DanNadel

Thinly veiled anti-semitism in the guise of an "award". You should be ashamed, and Family deserves an apology and retraction.

Andrew Berardini

Hi Dan,

I duly apologize for any part of this piece that you may have read as anti-semitic. I'm very sorry you read it as such because that was not my intention.

I meant the Orthodox distinction in the article merely as a statement of fact. I'm shocked and saddened by your accusation of anti-semitism; and used here, it feels like a word lobbed to stifle criticism rather than engage in dialogue.

Setting the accusation of anti-semitism to the side for a moment, if you read the rest of the "best of" issue, the categories are often invented and silly, many marked by sardonic humor. I do not wish to live in a society where one can't poke-fun at something, to question its pieties, including under the aegis of a "best of" distinction for an "award" in a category that I wholly invented. I hoped that this short, jokey critique/appreciation of Family would be read with a sense of humor, but I'm again sorry for any misinterpretations.

I respect many of the Harkham brothers ventures, and don't hate Family bookstore, in fact I love it enough to poke fun at it.

I would like to take this opportunity to correct an omission. Family is also owned and managed by David Kramer. I apologize for this omission.

Andrew Berardini