It is a truth universally acknowledged, that I cannot walk into a bookstore and not purchase a book.

This what I scolded myself last week, as I walked out of Bridge Street Books with not one but two books to add to my massive list. Bridge Street Books is a true treasure. It’s a nook overflowing with literature and dripping with the quintessentially quaint and nostalgic feeling that compels you to wander a privately owned bookstore. I met Brian there last week, who helped me with a ridiculous request. A literary novel, about food, that is not a cookbook, is not about Julia Child, and is not called “Like Water for Chocolate” (though I adore that book). When he produced two that fit, I couldn’t not buy them. And I knew that I’d have to return to interview someone who worked there.

Joe Razza is sharp, witty, insightful, and uses an incredibly expressive vocabulary. Unfortunately my phone ran out of space for video, so this is just an audio recording, but I encourage you to hear him out all the way through. He has real insight into the history of food and race in DC. He talks about food and semiotics, literally the language of food. Please excuse my bumbling demeanor, as I try to come up with questions that fail to capture the magnitude of his responses.

“My name is Joe Razza and I am a native Washingtonian. I usually refer to myself as a ‘chocolate citizen.’ I was born in the last institution in Washington, DC that was named after the Freedmen’s Bureau: Freedmen’s Hospital in 1969. I grew up here. My primary schooling happened in this area and the corruption of my youth owes itself very much to the owner of this bookstore and his family. Georgetown, because of the sliding and shifting real estate market, was at one point one of the cradles of punk-rock in DC. That means that the guy who owned this bookstore also owned the Key Theater and the Biograph Theater, buildings that were spitting distance from where we are now. The Key Theater was memorable not only for showing amazing movies, but also for hosting the most amazing Rock Horror Picture Shows, and the best New Year’s celebrations I’ve ever been to. Ever. Oh my god.

This bookstore I found after I followed the buyer here back over from Bick’s Books in 1991. The thing that brought me here was the amazing philosophy, politics, and criticism shelves. The way you can identify a really good bookstore is to see how much C. L. R. James they have on the shelves, and how many weird publishers. That struck me as being really crucial for this place to be part of the circle of radical ideas and what I came to understand as radical poetics. That orients this bookstore, and makes it easily the best bookstore in DC. It certainly has the best poetry section this side of the Rocky Mountains, and the best politics shelf in town, and the best Middle East politics shelf on the eastern seaboard.”