Geek Tourism: Dreamhaven and Uncle Hugo's

I'd like to launch a sporadic feature for this blog called Geek Tourism, pointing out geeky destinations for those who find themselves in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area. I would have written this entry earlier this week, but I'm getting over a nasty bout of gastroenteritis and wasn't really feeling like writing much in the past couple of days.

Today I'm going to feature two independent bookstores in Minneapolis, Dreamhaven and Uncle Hugo's.

Dreamhaven is a store in the Uptown neighborhood in Minneapolis, easily recognized by the garish shade of lavender that it's painted. They sell used and new science fiction, fantasy, horror, comics, videos, audiorecordings, action-figure-type toys, and a few oddball items that are difficult to categorize, like books about conspiracy theories, photographing rabbits, and the history of sideshow freaks (it's not a "Coast to Coast A.M." type of store, don't worry!) It's also a sort of shrine to local-ish author Neil Gaiman, who keeps his awards on display there. Dreamhaven also supports and sells local/independent comics and chapbooks, including a new volume of short stories they recently published by Peter S. Beagle. It's the sort of store in which it's easy to discover tons of things you never knew existed, but cannot possibly imagine not reading or viewing now that you know about them! Accessibility note: the front/street entrance has steps, but I think the back entrance (which is where the loading dock and parking lot are) has a ramp.

While you're in the neighborhood, I suggest paying a visit to two other local businesses, Falafel King (a restaurant serving Mediterranean and Middle Eastern goodies like souvlaki, gyros, and of course, falafel) and Bill's Imported Foods. I'm a foreign-junk-food aficionado, so it's a great place to replenish my supply of "I'm not sure what this is, but it has a picture of a strawberry on it" tea biscuits. Unlike more upscale/yuppie imported food stores like World Market (don't get me wrong, I love going there, too, it's just so @$%#ing expensive), Bill's has a "this is what we got, take it or leave it" feeling to it. The store is clean, and the merchandise is organized by category, but if you're not interested in deciphering labels or doing outside research, you probably won't know what a lot of the stuff is. Bills caters more to people from The Old Country looking for familiar things from home, and adventurous bargain hunters, than to people expecting the consistency and convenience of big box chain groceries. Bill's also sells stuff from countries that are less marketable here in the Midwest. Most grocery stores here that sell imported stuff focus on Western Europe, China, Japan, and Mexico. Bill's has stuff from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and more obscure Asian and South American countries. They also sell baked goodies from Falafel King. So, if you're looking for Serbian Jaffa Cakes, cardamom-flavored Sri Lankan tea, or 15 different brands (not exaggerating!) of Petit Beurre tea biscuits, Bill's is worth a stop.

Falafel King (since their website is inaccessible and rather inexplicably doesn't give the store location or phone number):
701 W Lake St
Minneapolis, MN 55408-3085
Phone: (612) 824-7887

Last stop is nearby in the Midtown neighborhood, Uncle Hugo's , and its sister (brother?) store Uncle Edgar's. Uncle Hugo's focuses most on used science fiction, fantasy, and horror books, with shelves crammed nearly floor-to-ceiling and some books in cardboard totes on the floor (I don't advise trying to get a wheelchair through this store, it's bad enough with low vision and a cane). They do have sections of new books, genre magazines, and collectible card game booster packs up front. Suggested reading lists for various sub-genres are helpfully tacked up on the ends of the bookcases.

(Re)Learning to Read

When I started school, in the late-mid 1980s (I now have music from Hedwig and the Angry Inch stuck in my head, *sigh*), the prevailing notion was that a child's ability to read would be irreparably damaged if parents tried to teach their children literacy skills outside the classroom, except as explicitly instructed by the teacher. If this hadn't been the case, I might have been the stereotypical Little Professor who learned to read at age 3 or 4, but, as it was, I didn't have any difficulty (other than trying to remember how to draw a letter S) with the way I was taught to read in school, so things turned out ok for me. This isn't to say I didn't have school trauma in my early education. I clearly remember freaking out when my kindergarten teacher changed our seating arrangement, and also being upset because the name of the current month seemed to change just as soon as I was able to remember and recite it. My mother remembers me coming home from my first day of first grade in tears because they hadn't started teaching us to read on that day. I breezed through the lessons, maxed out the extra credit options, tested at the highest possible percentile on all the standardized tests. My teachers weren't quite sure what to do with me (and a handful of other "gifted" kids) so I got pulled out of class a few times a week to write my own stories in the library. I even got to put one of my little story booklets on a featured shelf in the library (I wrote a story about my pet budgie, Polly). I was terribly proud. From that early age, I identified myself as a Reader, and my family, friends, and teachers did too. I befriended and pestered a series of elementary school librarians (I had the odd distinction of attending three different elementary schools because of a local Baby Boom Echo in the late 70s and early 80s that resulted in the contruction of several new schools and a shuffle of students while the district was reorganized) and collected masses of printouts from the electronic card catalog on various topics. I started reading a few "grown up" level books in third grade, but my teacher didn't believe me. Cliche that it is, I think most of my friends were books when I was a kid. I wasn't totally socially isolated, I had friends, but I've always been a nerd.

Fast forward to the last couple years of high school, when I started losing my sight. I was in denial for a couple of years (my parents still are) but as I slowly came to the realization that I couldn't read for more than a few minutes at a time, I was frightened and angry. How could I be me if I couldn't read? I got access to books on tape from the local library and later from NLS, and I've grown quite fond of reading-by-listening (despite auditory processing difficulties), but it just isn't the same. I can (for the most part) read large print books, but the books that get large type reprints aren't always the kinds of books I want to read.

The obvious first thing that most people think of when they think of a blind person wanting to read is braille. However, learning to read an entirely new alphabet, in a touch-based medium rather than a visual medium, as an adult, is significantly more difficult than starting out with braille (or both print AND braille) as a child. Braille, as you may not be aware, consists of more than simple substitutions of dots for letters and numbers. Because it takes up so much more space than even large print, because of the size of the characters and the thickness of the dots, literary braille by necessity must use over a hundred contractions. These contractions consist of abbreviations, special symbols, and combinations of letters and symbols. It's also optimized for transcribing the Christian Bible and other Christian materials, which makes it somewhat clunky for other materials. The special symbols and contractions are typically taught in chunks of a few contractions followed by practice material using those contractions, so the practice stories are of necessity fairly contrived, syntactically awkward, and BORING. I remember the basal readers in elementary school being similarly weird and boring, but I wish I could recall the enthusiasm that got me through them then.

I hope I can finish the dratted class by the end of the year. Or by June if I'm really motivated.