How Sarah McNally, Seasoned Bookseller, Spends Her Sundays

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/nyregion/sarah-mcnally-jackson-books.html

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In the 15 years since Sarah McNally opened her first McNally Jackson shop on Prince Street, she has become a key player in the city’s indie bookstore resurgence. Her third location, scheduled to open at South Street Seaport in August, will feature a wine bar that will also serve all manner of toast. “I wanted a simple food concept I couldn’t lose my shirt on,” she said. Ms. McNally, 44, who lives in Greenwich Village with her son, Jasper Jackson, 11, and their dog, Chief, notes that unlike many of her peers, she rarely gets away on summer weekends. “We should though, right? Sometimes I feel like life is rushing by so quickly and I still haven’t figured out how to live. I’m late and getting later all the time.”

DOG DAZE While Jasper’s still asleep, I go alone to Washington Square’s dog park. I spend a lot of time there, and it’s almost always disgusting. The other Sunday a dog peed on me, right on me, like I was territory to mark, like I was a lamp post.

THE GOSPEL OF PAPER I often stop by my Eighth Street stationery store on our way home and have pleasant conversations with strangers about stationery; or maybe about something they’re wearing. My staff make fun of me. “You’re always chasing,” they say. But stationery and books are really nice things to talk to people about.

NO GAME Jasper and I walk to the playground on Horatio Street. I’m 5-foot-11, so you’d think I’d be good at basketball. Yet when the ball gets caught in the net, bystanders six inches shorter feel sorry for us and are like, “Ugh, I’ll just get the ball.” I hate it so much. I try everything at my disposal: mind tactics, distraction. Jasper crushes me even though he’s so short.

BOY CULTURE There’s this odd boy culture I witness at Horatio: someone will come up and just be like “Hey you wanna play a game,” and Jasper will be like, “Yeah.” Do they ask each other’s names? They do not. There’s no mark of civility that I can see. They’re touching, they’re sweating, they’re touching each other whilst sweating — there’s a real physical intimacy to it.

SCRAPS We move along to lunch at BBar on the Bowery. Jasper gets a burger, I order eggs and eat his potatoes. Just scraps. I’ve been a vegetarian for 20 years. At lunchtime I subsist largely off his vegetarian scraps.

AFTERNOON TEA I make and drink enormous amounts of green tea all day. Gallons. It’s ideal because I’m really clumsy and — unlike coffee or black tea — I can just spill it and no one ever knows. Very few places serve decent green tea. It’s where coffee was 30 years ago — largely disgusting. So we go to this really fun Japanese grocery store called Dainobu and get my favorite loose leaf tea. Everything’s in Japanese. Jasper gets Hi-Chew candies and pop soda. Crazy pop soda called Ramune that’s also kind of a toy.

SUMMER READING Back at the apartment, Jasper’s reading “Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution.” He’s 11. I don’t know where he comes from. N.Y.C. kids are super-precocious. I’m reading Robert Musil’s super-old book “The Man Without Qualities.” This one line captures how we’re just rushing rushing rushing always today: “We’ve gained reality and lost dream. No more lounging under a tree and peering at the sky between one’s big and second toes. There’s work to be done.” I’m also reading “How to Be an Antiracist,” which Jasper’s father edited.

LIFE OF THE MIND I’ve entered my 40s now where people have their lives together, and they do all seem to be very organized in going to Montauk and spending lots of money on yoga pants. We’re glued to our phones, we’re on social media. It’s like that’s how we’re showing control of our lives — the feedback loop. That’s why I try and create places fully devoted to the life of the mind. I worry that the more time we spend worrying about the exact shape of our thighs, the more this whole other category of human need will atrophy.

BOOKS DRIVE Sometimes I drive books down to my Williamsburg bookshop on Sunday afternoon. I love Greenwich Village, but in Brooklyn it feels like there’s this division between people’s work and home lives that I feel I don’t have. I often spend weekend nights going through publishers’ catalogs — I look at roughly 80,000 books every year.

ORDER IN Jasper and I talk about going out to dinner, but wind up ordering Seamless. We order from Mario Batali’s restaurant Otto. I think it’s gone downhill since Mario went into … uh … forced retirement. We park our cars in the same garage. I saw him recently and he says he’s giving back — he told me he’s going to Africa to cook. Which is great. But the endive salad at Otto is going downhill.

LEARNING THE THINGS And then we watch “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” in bed. The main character Jake Peralta is teaching me how to speak contemporary English. I love how he says “ya borin’” instead of “you are boring.” Jasper says that’s not a thing, they’re just trying to make it a thing. But it’s a thing for me now. Peralta also says “noice” rather than “nice.” Jasper says that is a thing.