Las Vegas Strip Clubs: ‘Library After Air Raid’: On the Survival of Culture Amid the Barbarity of War
January 27, 2012 by diamond
In June of 2011, I purchased a postcard reproduction of Library After Air Raid (London 1940) (depiction, following page) at Vroman’s Books in Pasadena, California, and for the duration of that year, 12 months that were as hellish and chaotic for me as the events memorialized in the anonymous photographer’s lens from 1940, that postcard was always within arm’s reach; sometimes I employed it as a book mark for books I never finished reading. When I dwelled for seven months in a roach-infested, squalid communal hotel above a seedy strip club in San Francisco’s North Beach district (formerly the infamous Barbary Coast) Library After Air Raid was Scotch-taped to the wall near my mattress.
And now, as I pen these words, the postcard hangs by a magnet on the refrigerator in the mini-kitchenette of my studio apartment in Las Vegas, Nevada. Obviously 2011 was a year of a great many migrations in my life.
See the full article from “PopMatters”