Help Save Pandemonium Books in Harvard Square!

Every Bostonian with even the slightest inclination to mouth-breathing dorkdom knows the Pandemonium Book Store in Harvard Square. For the last seventeen years, Tyler Stewart has sat on a stool behind the counter, enthusiastically geeking out on topics of science-fiction and fantasy arcana with the similarly obessesed beardos who haunt the place; many a small child with a taste for dragons and robots has wandered into the store with a twenty dollar bill folded into the moist wallet of his hand, only to have it coaxed into Stewart's by way of a steady stream of recommendations that must be read by the science fiction neonate.

Like Million Year Picnic (a store so claustrophobically stuffed with old comics and located in such a fire trap that it was once gutted in flame, only to be rebuilt and restocked in the same space a couple of years later) and Leavitt & Pierece Tobacconists, Pandemonium is an institution that people who lived in Boston in the 80's and 90's find completely inseparable from the atmosphere of Harvard Square.

So it's sad enough that Pandemonium Books has migrated away from Harvard Square to Central Square. If Cambridge were a human body, it would be the equivalent of the kidney migrating to the thigh. But now Pandemonium's struggling to even stay afloat: the move resulted in a large period of unexpected downtime, and there are numerous back taxes owned. So Tyler Stewart has come up with a last ditch plan to save the store: sell t-shirts to one thousand people.

As Stewart passionately explains on his Livejournal page:

If 1000 customers don’t pre-order the shirts, I’ll probably start looking to roll up the business. I’ll consider every available option, but it’s unlikely I will be able to keep the store afloat.

I realize that this sounds like sounds like the worst type of emotional blackmail: “Buy a shirt, or the store gets it!” But there is more to this than money. Note that I am asking for one thousand PEOPLE to buy at least one store shirt, not for a thousand shirts to be sold. I need a thousand people to take part in this.

The reason why is that I am now working 11-12 hours a day, six to seven days a week, for a salary that is not currently sufficient to meet my needs (stupid, stupid, student loans). I have fought to keep my little store alive for seventeen years, and I am prepared to fight for another seventeen years, as long as I know that Pandemonium is appreciated. I need, need! to know that at least one thousand people give a damn about the store.

Maybe this is how booksellers have their mid-life crisis. Maybe it’s these frigid February days that keep the store empty for hours at a time. All I know is that I’m 40 years old, the store is in serious trouble, and maybe this is the time to wrap up things and get a 9-to-5 job with weekends off, vacations and health plans.

But the thing is, I do love my store. I love this life, these people! I just need to know other people appreciate Pandemonium, at least a little. The store has been the center of my life for seventeen years, so obviously it’s important to me. I just need to know that it’s important to you.

With one thousand people, I can pay off Pandemonium’s back taxes.

With one thousand people care, we have a real chance of getting through this.

As a native Bostonian, I have very fond memories of Pandemonium Books, and it breaks my heart that it would go under. As a boy, my father used to take me to Harvard Square, and while he spent many hours browsing through the jazz section of Tower Records, I would spend my time flipping through old copies of Creepy and Eerie at Million Year Picnic or looking for science-fiction and horror novels at Pandemonium.

Go on. Order a shirt. $20 is a small price to pay to save an institution all too wholly unique in a world of Amazon.com's and Border's Books: a specialist book store which loves both the books it sells and the people to whom it sells them. The world needs more stores like Pandenomium... not one less.

We're rooting for you, Pandemonium!

PLEASE READ: Pandemonium Books & Games In Danger Of Going Under! [Livejournal]