Post v Times (was Re: Watts article

[pynchonoid]

In the late '70s, for example, here in the East Bay --
across the Bay from San Francisco -- a business could
be made (I know the guy who made it) going to one of
the very few bookstores/newsstands that carried the
Sunday NY Times (there was such a place in Berkeley
next to the UC campus, and another 10 miles away in
downtown Oakland at Delauer's Newsstand where I worked
nights), pick up a bundle, and deliver them
individually, at a handsome profit, together with
bagels and cream cheese and hot coffee, to customers
up in the Berkeley Hills who didn't care to make the
cross-town trek to try to buy a copy.  That changed in
the 80s, I believe (maybe it was the '90s) when the NY
Times put together a deal to print the newspaper
locally so it could be distributed more widely through
the San Francisco Bay Area; only in the past 20 years
has the NY Times distribution evolved to the point
where you can get home delivery throughout the SF Bay
Area.  There may have been a few more newsstands in SF
where you could buy the Times, back in the 70s,  but
not many more. 

You could buy a copy of the NY Times in Paris when I
lived there, Jan-July '78, but only at select
newsstands and hotels.  In Pau, a departmental capital
in the southwest of France where I lived from August -
January 1977, you couldn't buy a copy of the NY Times,
although it was said to be available someplace in
Bordeaux.

Saturday Evening Post was always available everywhere
magazines were sold, which means just about
everywhere, throughout the US.

--- pynchonoid <pynchonoid at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> --- jbor:
> >and that the
> > 'NYT' had an international edition until 1967. It
> > has certainly had wide
> > national distribution in the U.S. all along.
> 
> Wide, perhaps, but not at all deep.  Yes you could
> buy
> a copy of the NY Times in this hotel and that book
> store, even outside the US -- but US national
> distribution to the home and on every newsstand
> (where
> Saturday Evening Post could be found) didn't come
> until a very long time after Pynchon's essay was
> published.  Being able to buy a current copy of the
> Times was the difference between being in the sticks
> and being in a real town.
>  


=====
http://pynchonoid.org
"everything connects"


	
		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail