'Is St Marks Bookshop that way?'

Where?: The East Village

When?: Now

Why?: The July Socialist Standard is now available at St Marks Bookshop.

"Make haste boys, I think St Marks Bookshop is that way."

My sitemeter tells me that I have one reader in New York City, so this post is especially for the Anglophile looking in.

If you so desire, you can now get the whole tactile experience of handling - nah, buying - the Socialist Standard at St Marks Bookshop in the East Village. The May and June issues are currently available for the jacked up price of three dollars.

Yep, more expensive than a slice but, on the other hand, cheaper than a small jar of marmite from that wee deli on Second Avenue.

With a copy of the Standard under your arm, and a Marie Lloyd retro T shirt wrapped around your torso, you could be the ultimate Lower East Side hipster . . . 1904 vintage.

Actually, now that I think about it, my sitemeter may be trying to deceive me. My solitary NYC reader was probably me wandering into a Internet Cafe one time to check out my blog when I was half-drunk. What else would I look at under the influence?

Lieutenant Commander William George Boaks made himself unavailable

Funny video via the The Campaign for Little Britain in the Big Apple website, who are seeking to turn a wee bit of Greenwich Village into a 'Little Britain', in the hope that it will sit alongside such existing (commercial) areas as Little Italy, Koreatown, Chinatown and Micro-Belgium in the heart of Manhattan.

One of the main backers behind the campaign are the people who run the Tea and Sympathy restaurant in Greenwich Village. Kara swears by the place, but the one time I was there I was half expecting Compo, Clegg and Norman St John-Stevas to walk through the door. It's that sort of place.

I say 'seeking' to establish a Little Britain but I think the idea of a 'Little Britain' might have already got the kibosh from the NYC authorities. The video is from over a year ago, and I've not heard anything else about the campaign since that time.

That's a bit of shame 'cos at a time when so many people back in Britain are trading in their union jack boxer shorts for flag of st george's pillow cases it would have been kind of sweet to have a Kitsch Britannia in the heart of the Big Apple.

People used to say if you wanted to experience what Britain was like thirty years ago, all you had to do was visit New Zealand. With this in place, you could now hang out with the Conchords in Manhattan experiencing old-tyme-albion before it finally relegates itself to the digital radio of Radio 7 back in Blighty. Red, white and blue bunting; chipped crockery with a youngish Elizabeth looking back at past you; the Sex Pistols not making it to number one with 'God Save The Queen'; and the old days when Space Dust was something that you put on the back of your tongue rather than up your nose.

Glen Matlock could conduct walking tours of Little Britain which would take in Tea and Sympathy, Myers of Keswick and the Bar and Telephone Grill on Second Avenue before ending up at the St Marks Bookshop where we would all fight over who would get to purchase the last copy of 'Rev-Specs' on the shelf. Sounds like a good night. Sounds like my typical Saturday night.

"We can go for a walk where it's quiet and dry . . . . And talk about precious things."

Hat tip to an Urban 75er for the YouTube clip.