![\"gallery_1\"](\"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/gallery_1.jpg\" "\\"gallery_1\\"")
<\/p>\nA few months ago a friend and I ventured up to Beacon on a whim (sort of).\u00a0 She’d been traveling back from Seattle and had met an interesting guy on the plane — who told her about a store he’d opened up in Beacon, NY, and invited her to come visit.<\/p>\n
Naturally, since my friend Liz is the adventuresome type (and the proud owner of a car), the two of us took a little road trip the next weekend up to this gentleman’s little shop.<\/p>\n
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The shop itself, Hermitage Beacon<\/a> is not all that large, but it’s brimming with a meticulously chosen collection of some of the most interesting rare books I’ve seen.\u00a0 First editions, out-of-print books, etc.<\/p>\n But while I was impressed by the store, I was even more charmed by the owner — Jon Beacham (the one Liz had met on the plane).\u00a0 He’s about our age (maybe even a little younger).\u00a0 And much like the rest of us struggling artists on the east coast, Jon had spent some time in NYC, living the Brooklyn lifestyle thing, struggling to get by, chipping away at trying to form the kind of connections one needs to establish a sustainable situation as an artist in NY.<\/p>\n And he just got sick of it.\u00a0 So he packed up and left.<\/p>\n From there he settled in Beacon, where he rents a building that serves as his store, his home, and a sort of strange nexus of artistic activity.\u00a0 In his reasonably sized but sparse aparment (he decided he really didn’t want much in the way of furniture — really just a table for film editing, some folding chairs for guests and a small refrigerator), Jon holds screenings of rare 16mm prints and other film gems — charging a modest fee for attendance and projecting the films on his wall.<\/p>\n He also invests a fair amount of time on his printing business — Merit<\/a> — where he painstakingly hand-sets type for short runs of out-of-print re-prints of rare books (I wish I could remember what he was working on when we were up there — some re-print of an interview with… i think Kerouac? which had originally appeared only in some obscure periodical), including an edition of Cleveland poet d.a. levy’s can we hold hands out here.<\/em><\/p>\n Jon does amazing work as a printer.\u00a0 And I really admire what he’s doing up in Beacon.\u00a0 I wish I could do something like that myself (and maybe I will someday).<\/p>\n For now, the best I can do is extend an open invitation from Jon to go visit his shop up in Beacon.\u00a0 And tell your friends.<\/p>\n To learn more, read this recent article on This <\/a>Recording<\/a>.\u00a0 He describes the whole kit & caboodle much more eloquently than I do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few months ago a friend and I ventured up to Beacon on a whim (sort of).\u00a0 She’d been traveling back from Seattle and had met an interesting guy on the plane — who told her about a store he’d opened up in Beacon, NY, and invited her to come visit. Naturally, since my friend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[355,356,354],"class_list":["post-848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-nerdiness","tag-beacon","tag-hermitage","tag-rare-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":864,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions\/864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"events\"](\"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/events.jpg\" "\\"events\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"letterpress_1\"](\"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/letterpress_1.jpg\" "\\"letterpress_1\\"")
<\/a>![\"merit\"](\"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/merit.jpg\" "\\"merit\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"hermitage\"](\"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/hermitage.jpg\" "\\"hermitage\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"hermitage-beacon-buy\"](\"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/hermitage-beacon-buy.png\" "\\"hermitage-beacon-buy\\""){kind=tracking}
<\/a><\/p>\n