
George Kennan... after the jump
Year in and year out, my strategy for gift-giving (holiday, birthday, or otherwise) can be boiled down to one word: scarves. Whenever I’m traveling, I make sure to visit a local market and buy up a dozen or so pieces of the inexpensive local neckwear. Come December, I pass them out like candy.
You just can’t go wrong: foreign scarves are cheap, guaranteed to fit, appropriate for both guys and girls, and tinged with a perfect hint of exoticism / name-drop-y pretentiousness that’s sure to thrill any Princetonian worth his salt (“Oh, do you like it? A friend actually bought it for me on the streets of Zanzibar…).
But this year I was forced to resort to other measures after discovering that my scarf stash had become misplaced somewhere between Phnom Penh and Wilmington, Delaware. This year I was forced to buy my Hannukah presents in Princeton, New Jersey.
Ugh, Princeton. Adorably perfect town, to be sure — but a little too perfect, don’t you think? A little too “tasteful”. In shopping terms, as you know, “tasteful” basically translates to “expensive”, “handsome”, and “old people-y.” As I made my way from cute little store to cute little store, I saw plenty of great gifts for my grandma’s upcoming birthday blowout (Happy 75th, MomMom!) and my great-aunt’s Boca Raton housewarming soirée — but very little in the way of options for my twentysomething friends.
If I knew anything about music, of course, I would have just beelined for the Record Exchange. Sadly, though, I possess, like, negative musical taste (#1 most played on iTunes? This song.) So instead I trundled sadly down Nassau Street, frustration mounting… until I discovered GlenEcho Books.