Bookstore Paradise or a Hangout for Poseurs?

Only a drive over will tell. (Looks like the place might be on the Gold Line...)

Where better to start a Los Angeles–based culture diary than on the city’s enpretzeled freeways? I leave an editorial meeting and take the 101 to the 5 to the 10 to Boyle Heights, en route to David Kipen’s Libros Schmibros, “a community bookstore and lending library.” It’s pretty much the best bookstore in the world, not so much for its scope (its stock is superb, but it’s an average-size storefront), but for its curation and spirit. Not only is every book in the shop one that any sane reader would covet, but if you happen to empty your pockets while you’re there, you’re free to borrow books you don’t buy.

The author is the editor of something called "The Los Angeles Review of Books", and represents a kind of epicene man of letters that I have never actually met here.... The entire blog entry is worth reading for that alone. More:

Whiskey! Why haven’t I thought of it sooner? I go to Musso & Frank with the excellent Katherine Taylor. We drink Maker’s Mark Manhattans. We keep our eyes peeled for the battling ghosts of Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, who apparently together wrote Double Indemnity here, “both drinking heavily because they couldn’t stand each other.” I understand the temptation. Last time I was in, I was almost carted out in a wheelbarrow.