Questionable taste

I wonder if there’s a pet store somewhere that decorates its display window with actual stuffed animals, one where the bathroom sink is an inverted tortoise shell and the business card holder is an exotic bird claw still attached to the glassy-eyed remains of an exotic bird. That would be cool.

Speaking of cool, we have a new bookstore in my neighborhood called M. Judson where the entrance is framed by two low walls of books. Hundreds of them, permanently bonded to one another in the manner of bricks. Forever unreadable, in other words. Dead.

To those for whom books are something more than mere commodities, this might be disturbing, just as a taxidermy-themed pet store might be disturbing to someone who believes that his dog or cat will join him in the afterlife, but let’s set that aside.

Let’s set aside also the possibility that ruining hundreds of erstwhile perfectly good books to decorate an upscale bookstore is in any way analogous to, say, wallpapering an upscale restaurant with SNAP cards.

Elitism is such a nebulous thing, don’t you think? Like flagrant wastefulness. So in the eye of the beholder.