Dislocations: The Little Lebowski… Shop

The dude abides… on Thompson Street in the village. The Big Lebowski is one of the greatest films ever made. If you don’t agree, you do not understand cinema. In fact, I don’t want to know you; go read another blog. The Little Lebowski is the film's disney store. A cardboard cutout of Jeff Bridges in in the icon icsweater standing there on the sidewalk, plain as day in the winter night.

According to the proprietor, whose name I didn’t get but let me take some pictures and who was a friendly Greenwich Village retailer, the hole in the wall shop started as a comic book store, and what looked like stencils of underground adult comic book adorned parts of the ceiling, a remnant of that incarnation. He said that he carried some Lebowksi items, but about two years ago it started to take off and the store became solely devoted the film.

All the items, which included a lot of t-shirts some of which are exclusive to the store, were quality stuff. The drinking game, the DVDs of course, weird stuff like Walter action figures!, cool stickers with lines from the film, and there were arty film tributes – a toilet with the famed rethort against the rug pissers – At Least I’m Housebroken! On an ctual toliet, 0r the landlord in the tights and leaves, as he was dressed for the recital or a blow up doll representing Marge Lebowski doing her art. An homage to the movie, a fan recreation – the store is a both a desintaiton and a specialty retailer. I don’t really buy this sort of memorbilia, but I am glad I can. Knowing this place exists… is well…. I forgot what I was saying.

The stores claims it’s the first shop for achievers, and proud we are of all of them. The Village, it was always sort of touristy and is still bohemian and it is satisfying to see how well Lebowsky appreciation fits into the timeless funkiness, in the parlance of our times, that will always be Thompson Street, just south of Washington Square Par. The block has yet to be completely assimilated into the NYU Campus. One thing the Cohen Brothers film does is celebrate, through comedy and cinema, the suvival of 60s counter culutre ethos (at least it's an ethos) into the 90s; the Little Lebowski Shop is located in the heart of where people first coalesced around the ideas contained in the ideals to which the Dude dedicates his life.

The Village is the rug that ties the whole room or history together.