The book shop of my dreams
And I mean this quite literally
Today is the final submission deadline for slips slips, and there’s one last inspirational publication that I want to cover. But first, a few words on where it came from.
A recurring dream: I wander into a bookstore. As I scan the shelves and sift through boxes, a pageant of unknown tItles flashes before my eyes, all courtesy of my unconscious. These are mostly comics and illustrated books, resplendent in color and image, implying a hidden reality of bold creation emanating from beyond the reach of the common eye. In any given dream I look at hundreds of books, selecting some to take home with me, but they all dissolve into loose neurons the moment I wake up.
I’ve had variations of this dream for decades, but over time the imaginary bookstore has adopted the name and ethos of a real-world place, one that happens to be my all-time favorite shop: Desert Island. It’s not much of a stretch, though, because Desert Island really is like that - it’s one of the few places in this straining, self-limiting city that actually lives up to one’s dreams.
I was intrigued by Desert Island before it even opened. Back in 2008, I was associate director of The Brick Theater in Williamsburg, where I’d spend my nights and weekends helping to create and facilitate performances. During breaks, on my way to the deli where we bought sandwiches and beer, I’d pass an abandoned bakery with cool old signage that read “Sparacino’s BAKERY / ITALIAN FRENCH SICILIAN BREAD.” Aside from an approving grunt of aesthetic acknowledgment, I never paid it much mind - until the day that a new sign was tacked right underneath it, reading “AND COMIC BOOKLETS.” As someone who had been obsessed with comics and cartoons since childhood, seeing those words literally spring up from the woodwork felt like a targeted hallucination.
As soon as the shop was open, I eagerly popped inside to encounter a room of vintage wallpaper and handcrafted artworks surrounding tables and shelves that teemed with a carefully curated selection of indie, foreign, and vintage comics. It was one of my dreams come to uncanny life. A horde of researchers studying me around the clock could not have engineered an establishment more likely to please me.
I introduced myself to the proprietor, Gabe Fowler, and learned that he had named the place Desert Island after the ubiquitous single-panel cartoon trope of being stranded on a little hemisphere of sand with nothing but a single palm tree, surrounded by a vast ocean. And it was indeed an oasis in the void for people who shared my taste for an anomalous flourishing of comic and cartoon design of all stripes, from high art to low - all curated with an unerring eye for the authentically idiosyncratic. I regularly visited to discover the abundance of new and rediscovered books that had washed up on its shores.
Gabe and his shop soon became an important part of the community. He provided an open door to thousands of artists by offering to sell books from nearly anyone who took the time to come by and drop them off. He hosted readings and events that brought together legendary and emerging comic creators from around the globe - including collaborating with The Brick on a couple of Comic Book Theater Festivals and, more grandly, organizing years of blowout convention-style events that brought his vibe to larger Brooklyn venues like the Pratt Institute. When the pandemic hit, Gabe rallied the hundred of creators in his orbit to create a series of online lockdown comics called, perfectly, Rescue Party, many of which were recently published in print form (here’s my own contribution, which didn’t end up in the book). To stay afloat, he also established a monthly Mystery Mail subscription that allowed patrons to support the business even when we couldn’t drop by in person.
My own visits to the physical store became much rarer after I stepped away from The Brick - but by then it had long since supplanted the succession of anonymous bookstores in my dreams. For years now, any such location conjured by my sleeping brain has been identified as “Desert Island,” even when it bears no resemblance to the real thing. Sometimes it’s a vast warehouse, sometimes it’s a series of underground tunnels, sometimes it’s a flashy strip-mall emporium. Sometimes Gabe is there, sometimes he’s replaced by a different avatar, sometimes I’m in the place on my own. But the center of the dream is always the excitement of discovering books and comics that I never imagined existing - an experience whose waking version finds its unmatched expression at the real Desert Island.
So it was a particular shock to read recently that, after 16 years, Desert Island was getting kicked out of the former bakery it called home. It was a typically unglamorous NYC real estate story - the landlord got a better offer. It had been about two years since I’d set foot inside, but it was a gut-punch all the same, like hearing that your childhood house had burnt down.
Fortunately, the many people who had grown to love Desert Island created their own rescue party. A GoFundMe campaign that raised nearly $100k, allowing Gabe to sign a 10-year lease a block away from the original location. It was about as happy an ending as this kind of story can have, but with a melancholy overtone appropriate to a city that swallows histories whole while you’re glancing at your phone.
Last weekend, I took Dash to pay one last visit to the old location. It was bustling Saturday afternoon, with a mix of regulars coming to pay tribute and folks visiting from out of town to see it for the first time. I was so excited to soak it in that I forgot to take my own photos. Despite undoubtedly being sick of talking about it, Gabe was kind enough to spend some time chatting about his plans and reminiscing about old times. The new location, which should open in the spring, will be similar in spirit to the Sparacino’s location but different in execution. As sad and inconvenient as it might be to pick up stakes, it’s also an opportunity for reinvention. I found myself wondering if the new digs will look like one of the versions I created in my sleep. I hope not - I’d much rather be surprised.
In any event, I started off saying this was about one of my favorite publications, and so it is. Since 2009, Gabe has been publishing Smoke Signal, a comics anthology in the broadsheet format that inspired slips slips. For its first decade Smoke Signal presented a miscellany of artists across every issue, distilling the experience of discovering new and beloved artists at the physical store into a handy print edition. More recently, he’s targeted individual artists - Keiichi Tanaami, James Jean, Marion Fayolle - to develop entire solo issues, “more like artists’ books in the form of a newspaper,” as it says on the site. Smoke Signal soldiers on, like Desert Island, in evolved form, continuing to offer new surprises at every encounter.
slips slips hopes to emulate Smoke Signal - and Desert Island - in its rallying of passionate creators and its spirit of anything-goes adventurousness. Our premiere newsprint format is also a nod to the homely medium that Smoke Signal uses as a platform for its dizzy imaginative constructions - which is in turn an homage to the Sunday comics pages of old, and extravagant publications like the New York World. Over time, I hope we too can provide that sense of excitement and discovery that accompanies any time spent with Smoke Signal or Desert Island - whether it’s in waking or asleep.
Today’s the final day for submissions! Look sharp! Let me know if you have questions or issues! Rage, rage against the dying of the light!
WHAT IT IS: slips slips is a new literary publication, named for a line from Gertrude Stein, that aspires to build a community of voices on paper. The first issue will be published in early 2025 in a broadsheet format that takes inspiration from the stacked cacophony of 19th-century newspapers, with items laid out in columns across multiple pages that mimic the experience of browsing through an entire world at once.
THEME: The theme of the first issue will be "Dispatches" - in other words, brief, urgent bits of information and insight that desperately need to be shared. These can come in the form of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drawings, etc. The content is, of course, up to you, provided it conveys the sense of an important message from a world - inner or outer, actual or imaginary - onto which you have a unique perspective.
FOR WRITERS: Please send a submission of no more than 500 words, in any genre, style, or format you prefer. Titles are encouraged but not mandatory and will not count toward the word limit (unless they're super-long).
FOR VISUAL ARTISTS: Please send 1-5 small, black and white images that would reproduce well on newsprint (e.g., not too much delicate detail). These can be either a serial/sequence or stand-alone images - in the case of the latter, we might pepper them throughout the publication rather than running them together, unless you specify otherwise.
NOTE: If submitting poetry or images, please keep in mind that the formatting of each entry in this issue will be in vertical columns - this could affect the positioning of line breaks or drawings.
DEADLINE:Please send us your contribution via email at slipsslipsslipsslips@gmail.comno later than Friday, December 13. We will contact you if we have any concerns or to confirm that your contribution will be included in our premiere issue.