Uncle Hugo's

Because the end of the year is approaching, I recently went through all my checking account transactions to find donations. This is a bad year for looking backward because you suddenly find yourself looking at the before times. The last time I had lunch at a couple of places I used to visit regularly until March, for instance. Before.

But it was a check card transaction recorded on April 17 that really got me. Yes, that date is pretty late in our covid saga, because it wasn't to pay a restaurant: it was for a bookstore, and it was the last store I went into before Minnesota locked just about everything down. 

Uncle Hugo's, which was the longest operating science fiction and fantasy bookstore in the U.S. Located on Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis. 

I've been going there since I moved to Minnesota in 1986 (or maybe I started going the year after). I've mentioned it in passing or in more depth seven times on this blog.

That day, knowing the lockdown was coming, I made a special trip over to finally buy all of The Expanse books because I trusted that Uncle Hugo's would have every one of them in stock. And they did:

I suppose I should have arranged the books differently for this photo, but they're in order from lower left in rows (book 1 is at bottom left, book 8 at top right). 

A bit more than a month after that visit, on the night of May 29, Uncle Hugo's was burned to the ground, along with a number of other buildings in its neighborhood in Minneapolis during the days and nights that people around here have taken to calling "The Uprising." 

At the time I couldn't write about it. It was in the midst of so much other devastation, especially the loss of human lives, starting with George Floyd's, but also Breonna Taylor and so many others. Looking back at my posts from those days, I see that I could barely write anything.

But after seeing that April purchase in my records and having just watched the first three episodes of season 5 of The Expanse that were recently been released, it now seems like the time to write something here about this particular loss of a community institution. 

The store's owner, Don Blyly, is cooperating with a Go Fund Me that was set up. He hopes to start the store again in a new location. Info on his progress (written in his typical fashion, if you've ever read an Uncle Hugo's business update) is also on that page. Though all of the store's books — including its incredible stash of used titles — were destroyed in the fire, he's also selling through Abebooks online from his personal collection and signed copies that were donated by authors, and that link is included in the progress update.

I hope the store can come back. I'm sad that I never wrote a post about it specifically before now. I took it for granted.

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Past posts that mentioned Uncle Hugo's:

A History of Book Distribution Channels, October 2017

Two Covers, Separated at Birth, August 2016

Go with the Flowchart, August 2015

Recommendations from Jo Walton, April 2014

The Forever War's Many Covers, March 2013

No Coast Craft-o-Rama, December 2008

Lois McMaster Bujold, April 2008