McKay's Books Mebane NC

At McKay's Books

Mebane, NC

So far this summer the heat has been stifling,with temps at or over 95 degrees F° most days. So, last month, given a forecast of a break in the heat, I decided to take a 4 hour drive down south through Lynchburg and Danville to Mebane, North Carolina, and the newest location in the McKay's Books franchise. 

McKay's is a chain of used bookstores, all of which are located either in Tennessee or North Carolina. It took me a while to realize this, but the McKay used books in Manassas, Virginia, is not part of the McKay's chain, even though McKay used books has the same shelving system and the same inventory scheme as McKay's.

 

The newest McKay's store opened only last April (it previously was in Greensboro). It's at 4053 Wilson Blvd. in Mebane, North Carolina, 27302, on a frontage road that runs parallel to interstate 40.

 

The interior is quite spacious and airy.

I would say that only about a third of the store's interior is set aside for books; the rest is dedicated to toys (lots of action figures), video games and gaming accessories, a large section for DVDs, and even a collection of secondhand audio equipment:

They have a decent section of used vinyl and CDs.

As far as books go, the sections are clearly noted and labeled, so finding books in a particular category is not difficult. Compared to the inventory in the Knoxville, TN branch, the Mebane location is less expansive, with a rather limited selection of paperbacks. They did have a good inventory of graphic novels, comic books, and even bins filled with trading cards for things like 'Magic, The Gathering.'

 

While at McKay's I submitted a collection of video and PC games; old vinyl; graphic novels; and hardcovers and paperbacks, for consideration for 'store credit,' and was pleasantly surprised to receive over $80 in said store credit. That sum certainly was more than I expected, and more than I would get from other used book outlets. 

Summing up, the Mebane McKay's is a pleasant place to shop at, but not the greatest place for paperback fanatics. To be fair, the store hasn't been that long in operation, so it could be that with the passage of time, the inventory will increase. I'm planning on a return visit, perhaps next year, to see what develops.

Book Review: Afro-6

Book Review: 'Afro-6' by Hank Lopez

5 / 5 stars

Let's wrap up our 'Some Tough City' celebration with 'Afro-6,' a 1969 novel from Dell. 

This novel is a member of a small, but significant, genre of 'what if' novels and short stories dealing with black takeovers / revolutions, one prominent example being Edwin Corley's 1970 novel 'Siege.' Also worth searching out are Robert Silverberg's 1970 story 'Black is Beautiful,' and Joe Hensley's 1973 story 'In Dark Places.'

Author Enrique Hank Lopez (1920 - 1985) was a Mexican-born author and, according to his obituary in the Los Angeles Times, the first Chicano to graduate from Harvard Law School.

Lopez published a number of books, on varied topics, in the 1970s and 1980s. These topics including the Andes plane crash survivors ('They Lived on Human Flesh !', 1973), the racial and educational politics of social advancement ('The Harvard Mystique', 1979), Indian mysticism ('The Hidden Magic of Uxmal', 1980) and a biography of writer Katherine Anne Porter ('Conversations With Katherine Anne Porter: Refugee from Indian Creek,' 1981).

'Afro-6' is not an easy novel to acquire. At amazon, the bookjackers have it listed at prices ranging from $175 to $295. At eBay, a vendor is advertising a 'like new' copy for $375 ('or best offer'). I remember getting my copy some four years ago, for a lot less money than that.

What, exactly, is 'Afro-6' ? Well, according to first-person narrator John Rios,

Dig. Dig this - I belong to a secret task force that's taking over New York City within the next ten days. Not all of the city, mind you, just the island of Manhattan. First of all, we'll isolate this miserable ofay town by destroying all the bridges and bottling up the tunnels connecting it to the surrounding metropolitan area. Then we're going to squeeze whitey into a very tight corner, man.

It's the early 70s, and a group of black revolutionaries are plotting to paralyze the U.S. with a series of riots and demonstrations, these part of an ambitious effort to take control of Manhattan, and use its possession to extort / leverage a black homeland from the federal government. Meticulous planning has gone into every aspect of Afro-6, and at 6 p.m. on October 1, it all goes down.

For Rios, who is a black Puerto Rican, the revolution is an opportunity to end the oppression of black and brown people, and stick it to whitey. Not that Rios necessarily hates white people as individuals; he has had white, Jewish, liberals as lovers, colleagues, and friends. But he hates the white power structure, it's long past time for the honkys to be shown the error of their ways.

The narrative regularly switches from the first-person perspective of Rios to the third-person perspective of Alan Geller, a friend of Rios's from their college days at Harvard. Geller provides the novel with a 'white' perspective that is sympathetic towards the black power movement.

I'm not going to spoil anything, but I will say that roughly halfway through the novel's 237 pages, Afro-6 does indeed 'go off.' And the entire nation is going to witness the depth of black rage.............

I give 'Afro-6' a Five Star Rating, because it's a well-plotted thriller. Author Lopez infuses ideology into the narrative, but avoids giving the novel a hectoring tone. There are some well-written action / combat sequences, and a healthy amount of caustic humor; one of the best examples of such, describes white liberals attending a rally held by a black militant named 'Abdul X.' As Abdul excoriates the white attendees, these revel in their abasement. 

If you can find an 'affordable' copy of Afro-6 it's well worth getting. It would be nice if, at some point in the future, a reprint of the novel can be introduced to the reading public, perhaps through something like W. W. Norton's Old School Books imprint from the 1990s. 

To paraphrase the diction in 'Afro-6,' I'm sure even honkys will dig the vibes of this novel !

Penthouse August 1972

Penthouse magazine
August 1972

August, 1972, and the top single in the U.S.A. is 'Alone Again (Naturally)' by the Irish singer-songwriter Gilbert O' Sullivan. I remember hearing it on the AM radio......it was in heavy rotation, back in those days.

The latest issue of Penthouse magazine is out, featuring Pet Marian Maylam on the front cover. There's not much else in the magazine to get excited about, but Marian, a lithe British redhead, provides a memorable portfolio where Bob Guccione displays his skills as a photographer.

 

Book Review: The Compound

Book Review: 'The Compound' by William Gale

3 / 5 Stars

Gimme the broom….

Late November, 1973. On a cold night in the urban wasteland of the South Bronx, a drag queen named Jocelyn (real name William Battles) is out on the town, hitting the parties at the gang hangouts. Jocelyn decides to stop in at a party held in the clubhouse of the Black Spades. She soon discovers that the Spades aren’t fond of drag queens – ‘Faggot ! Faggot !’ -  and she flees for her life.

Gimme the broom…. 

As she frantically tries to run away from the grounds of the apartment tower, teetering on her high heels, a mob of Spades emerge from the clubhouse. They knock her to the ground…….and begin beating her.

Jocelyn screams as her dress is torn off, and hands grip her legs, holding her immobile…….

Gimme the broom…. 

 As of 2024, no one has been arrested for the murder of William Battles.

 

The South Bronx became a pop culture touchstone in the early 1980s thanks to films such as ‘Wolfen’ (1981) and ‘Fort Apache: The Bronx’ (1981), but the decay of the borough actually began in the late 1960s.

By the early 1970s, the New York city media were touting the South Bronx as a hellhole, an exemplar being the March 27, 1972 issue of New York magazine, the cover of which showed an array of gang colors, along with the blurb ‘Are you ready for the new ultra-violence ? The return of the New York street gang.’

And in fact, the South Bronx indeed was a hellhole. One particular site in the hellhole is the subject of this investigative report by William Gale, first published in hardcover in 1977 by Rawson Associates, and as a Ballantine Books paperback a year later.

‘The Compound’ was, in reality, a complex of five apartment buildings on Bryant Avenue in the Bronx. From 1971 to 1973 hundreds of black and Puerto Rican youths, affiliated with gangs such as the Savage Nomads, the Mongols, and the Latin Diplomats (in real life, the Ghetto Brothers), used the complex both as a clubhouse, and as a drug-dealing emporium. That the gangs were able to commandeer an apartment complex and use it for criminal purposes, with little interference from the city government, shows how dysfunctional mayor James Lindsay’s administration had become by the early 1970s.

Over the 242 pages of ‘The Compound’, author Gale relates the (mis)adventures of some of the residents (who are given pseudonyms). These are a colorful lot, and include the endearing teenaged lovers ‘Amelia’ and ‘Slick’, whose affection for each other was tested by Amelia’s pregnancy. There is ‘Carlton Williams’, aka ‘Brother Sunshine’, an idealist whose advocacy for peace ended when he suffered Severe Head Trauma while trying to defuse a confrontation. There is ‘Sex Machine’, president of the Angels gang, whose unrestrained priapism was curtailed to some extent after his sentencing to 25 years to life for first-degree murder. And let us not forget ‘Black Bongo’, supreme leader of the Savage Nomads, and his wife, ‘Big Mama’, ‘….a chunky, thick-featured Puerto Rican who wore her mahogany-colored hair frizzed over her ears like a pair of electrified ear muffs.’ And then there is the fifteen year-old ‘Popsicle,’ whose maltreatment of suspected turncoat led to the imposition of ghetto justice at the hands of Black Bongo.

One thing ‘The Compound’ is vague about, is exactly how author Gale observed, or paraphrased, the actions and conversations of the individuals profiled in the book. The book has no source notes, citations, or footnotes. What role the book’s two co-authors, city detectives Ed O’Rourke and Vito Moles, played as sources for the described events is not clear. Presumably some of the dialogue and actions are reconstructed from courtroom testimonies and documents, but Gale provide no indication as to whether this was the case. These failures of sourcing limit use of ‘The Compound’ as a historical narrative.

If you are interested in the social pathologies and criminal culture of New York city during the early 70s, then you will find ‘The Compound’ an engaging, if at times alarming, read. Just keep in mind that external documentation of the events portrayed in the book is lacking.

HVAC Reading July 2024

HVAC Reading

July, 2024

It's midsummer here in Central Virginia, which means it's best to stay indoors when it's 90 degrees and 80% RH outside. Stay indoors, and run the HVAC......this makes it pleasant to sit in my easy chair, and read paperbacks. I got a bunch (above) to tide me through the summer and into the start of Fall (which usually happens the first or second week of October). Three New Wave-era anthologies, and three anthologies from the Paperbacks from Hell era.

 

I have some cold beers and sodas at hand.......

Book Review: City Dogs

Book Review: 'City Dogs' by William Brashler

2 / 5 Stars

William Brashler was born in 1947 and grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He worked as a police reporter in North Chicago, and used this experience in composing ‘City Dogs.’ Of the fiction and nonfiction books Brashler published during the 1970s and 1980s, the best-known of these is ‘The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings,’ published in 1973 and made into a 1976 movie starring Billy Dee Williams.

‘City Dogs’ first was published in 1976 in hardback. This Signet paperback edition (217 pp.) was published in November, 1977. The cover artist is uncredited. 

The novel is set in Chicago in the Fall of 1969. The protagonist is a middle-aged wino, and former thief, named Harry Lumkowski. Harry spends his dissipated days getting drunk on cheap wine, snatching purses, breaking into the trunks of parked cars, and lying on thin mattresses in fleabag hotels.

Harry isn’t above getting sober if it means he can participate in a robbery that will leave him with more money than what he gets from his monthly unemployment check. So, Harry doesn’t object when two small-time punks, Jimmy Del Corso and Donald Ray Burl, decide to recruit him for what promises to be a lucrative job. 

The problem, is, Del Corso and Burl aren’t too bright, and even an alcoholic like Harry can see that there is a good likelihood of the heist going bad. But the Chicago Winter isn’t that far away, and Harry is willing to take a risk if it means an easier life during the long, cold months ahead…….. 

While ‘City Dogs’ is marketed as a crime novel, it is in fact an effort at the genre of American Realism. The plot is rather thin, and serves as a scaffold upon which the author can expound on the lives and troubles of his cast of characters. Brashler’s prose is unwaveringly hardboiled, with the similes and metaphors that are obligatory to that diction:

There were more men on the street now….looking up with faces that looked like the tops of cans that had been ripped open, eyes buried in the sockets, lips that hung and flapped for saliva.

The narrative emphasizes telling, rather than showing, and as a result, readers will need to endure lengthy internal monologues, and passages describing the internal torments and dilemmas, of the personages with whom Harry interacts. These passages become increasingly tedious as the novel unfolds.

I won’t disclose any spoilers, save to say that the characters in ‘City Dogs’ are not particularly likeable, and by the time I reached the final chapters, I was rather indifferent to their fates.

Summing up, ‘City Dogs’ is a middling effort at an urban noir novel. If you are fond of novels set on the mean streets of Chicago, then you may find it worthwhile, but those looking for exemplars of American Realism from the 1970s are directed to Richard Price’s 1974 novel ‘The Wanderers,’ or Vern E. Smith’ 1974 novel ‘The Jones Men’.

The Ghetto Brothers Power Fuerza

The Ghetto Brothers  

Power - Fuerza

1972

The Ghetto Brothers were a street gang active in the South Bronx during the late 1960s, and through the 1970s. Primarily comprised of a Puerto Rican and black membership, the gang was formed, and led, by Benjy Melendez. Melendez had an artistic side, and he, along with his brothers Victor and Robert, David Silva, Luis Bristo, Chiqui Conception, Franky Valentin, and Angelo Garcia, formed an eponymous band to play at various social functions in the neighborhood.

 

In 1972, the band paid $500 to record an LP in Fine Tone Studios in Manhattan. Titled Power-Fuerza, the LP had a small pressing, but nonetheless gained the group some coverage. It since has become a very rare collector's item.

 

A CD of the album was issued in 2008, and also has become a high-priced collector's item. However, an affordable mp3 of Power-Fuerza is available at amazon, and at the Vampi-Soul records webpage. 

 

The eight songs on Power-Fuerza show influences from a variety of sources, including soul, R & B, Latin music, rock, and the vocal harmonies commonplace in the classic pop songs of the 1950s and 1960s. 

 

Evoking a unique, multicultural sensibility, the album is well worth a listen, especially if you are interested in the street culture of New York City in the 1970s. 

 

Benjy Melendez has published a memoir of his days as a Ghetto Brother in the South Bronx, 'Ghetto Brother: How I Found Peace in the South Bronx Street Gang Wars,' also available at amazon.

Book Review: The Seventh Power

 

Book Review: 'The Seventh Power' by James Mills

3 / 5 Stars

'The Seventh Power' (224 pp.) was published by Jove Books in October, 1977. The cover artist is uncredited.

James Mills (1932 - 2011) wrote a number of novels set in the grimier milieu of New York City. He is best known for his 1966 novel 'The Panic in Needle Park,' which was made in to a 1971 film starring Al Pacino, and his 1972 novel 'Report to the Commissioner,' which was a bestseller and also turned into a film. 'The Power' (1990) is a cold war spy novel. One of Mills's most celebrated books, the nonfiction 'The Underground Empire' (1986) later was the subject of an expose in the Los Angeles Times, whose investigation revealed that some of the book's content was fabricated or misrepresented.

'Seventh' is set in late 70s New York City. Lead character Adelaide, aka 'Aizy' (her surname never is disclosed) is a brilliant but deeply troubled girl from a wealthy family. As a student at Princeton, she becomes infatuated with soul brother Bobby Fletcher. Bobby persuades Aizy to sign on to a conspiracy: make an atomic bomb, and use it to extort a comittment from the U.S. government to address poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

To acquire plutonium for the bomb, Bobby recruits a street criminal named 'Stoop' Youngblood. Together, the three conspirators set up shop in a decaying tenement building. Aizy knows her physics, and her engineering, and crafting a low-yield nuke in the kitchen is not all that difficult. And when the trio announce their intentions, and their ransom demands, to the authorities, life for people living in what could be a Manhattan nuclear detonation zone is going to get very, very interesting.....  

The first half of 'Seventh' is an engaging read, as author Mills goes about setting up the characters and the plot via short, to-the-point chapters suffused with ironic humor. The descriptions of assembling a 'kitchen sink' atomic bomb have the verisimilitude necessary to grant credibility to the idea of nuclear blackmail. Where the narrative loses momentum, however, is in the final third of the novel, where - the authorities having been given an Ultimatum - we are treated to page after page of terse, declarative Police Procedural text:

"So what's the alternative ?"

"Get between her and the bomb. Get the damned thing away from her."

"Ideas ?"

Two of the men started quarreling and two others moved away and conferred in whispers. Ransom heard the word 'ambassador,' and one of them, a young, scrubbed, red-headed man in a blue blazer, left the room.

Random sat down and someone called in Dusko. He said his boss, the DA, was on the way in from Long Island.

"We can't wait," Carrol said, and began a discussion Ransom didn't hear.

This 'standing around and talking' stuff goes on too long, and contributes little save narrative padding. I won't disclose any spoilers about the novel's denouement, save to say that when it finally does arrive, it allows the author to have his cake, and eat it too.

'The Seventh Power' is a solid, but not overly memorable 1970s New York City crime / thriller novel. If you like that genre, and novels such as 'The Black Death,' and 'The Taking of Pelham One Two Three', it may appeal to you.

Penthouse July 1986

Penthouse

July 1986

July, 1986, and Peter Gabriel's single 'Sledgehammer' sits atop the Billboard Hot 100.

The July issue of Penthouse is on the stands, featuring Pet Krista Pflanzer on the cover.

 

The magazine still has a healthy page count, but it clearly is in a transitional period. For one thing, the advent of videocassettes is irrevocably changing the 'adult' entertainment landscape. No longer were redblooded American males reliant on print media for thrills and titillation; anyone with a TV, a VCR, and a credit card, could have porn delivered to their houses or apartments. The July Penthouse has its share of videocassette ads in its back pages; the same things that eventually would kill the magazine are, at least in 1986, bringing in needed revenue.

Does anyone remember the 'Pony' shoe brand ?! They were big in the 80s. I never bought any Pony shoes, I always was comfortable with Adidas or Nike.

In the July issue, publisher Bob Guccione makes clear his alarm and disgust over the actions of the Reagan administration's Attorney General, Edwin Meese, who in July of '86 published 'The Meese Report' on pornography. 

Guccione was quite hostile towards Meese and the latter's efforts to curtail 'adult' magazine distribution. While the Report did not do all that much in terms of enacting federal laws to curtail porn distribution per se, it did scare many outlets into discontinuing magazine sales; for example, in April of '86, 7-11 stores stopped selling Penthouse and Forum, a move that obviously cut into Guccione's bottom line. The July issue of Penthouse had an article that was (unsurprisingly) very critical of Meese.

Turning now to the stuff that Meese didn't approve of, the Penthouse Forum still is going strong. After all, everything in the Forum was 100% true !

Probably the best pictorial in the July issue is the one featuring a German lass named Helga. She likes "...a foaming stein of Bavarian beer," and believes "...one man is enough for me."

 

The essay 'Summer Sex,' by Ellen Sherman, relates tales of summertime lust and love, 80s style. Taiwanese artist Hilo Chen provides a great accompanying illustration.

As part of his campaign to cast Ed Meese and the Reagan administration as fanatics who were denying Americans freedom of expression, and Penthouse as a patriotic manifestation of the 1st Amendment, Guccione has an artsy pictorial of the Statue of Liberty. 

The accompanying essay by sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov lends big-name credibility to the pictorial (then again, we know Asimov wasn't above doing a little bit of his own 'spicy' stuff now and then). However, Asimov's essay is less about freedom, or even the Statue of Liberty, and more about the need to construct space colonies (?!) since these are places that would be free from the mores and attitudes of people like Meese..........

Let's close our overview of the July issue with some rather lowbrow cartoons......all part of the fun, in that long-ago Summer of '86.