a Snapchat Lens to celebrate 60 years of Berkeley’s legendary book store.
“India has the Taj Mahal. Berkeley has Moe’s.”
– The San Francisco Chronicle
We’re commemorating Moe’s 60th anniversary with a special Snapchat Filter that lets you and a friend wear black top hats like the one Moe wore during one of his infamous opening night parties.
On October 12th, 1959 Moe and Barbara Moskowitz opened the doors to their first paperback bookstore and newsstand on Shattuck Avenue in Downtown Berkeley. Later drawn to Telegraph Avenue by the radicals and U.C. Berkeley students, Moe introduced Fair Trade into the book selling industry and the four-level bookstore has survived riots, teargas, recessions and the Internet. It even appears in the 1967 classic film The Graduate, as Dustin Hoffman stares out the window of the now shuttered Caffe Mediterraneum.
Today the iconic store is owned and operated by Moe and Barbara’s daughter, Doris Moskowitz, who published Radical Bookselling: A Life of Moe Moskowitz in 2016, and is at the center of Quirkeley’s 2015 short film New Mo’ Cut David Peoples Lost Film of Moe’s Books, along with Oscar-nominated screenwriter David Peoples and his 16mm workprint of the opening night party of Moe’s on Telegraph.
In late 2014 the little film can was recovered at the Berkeley dump and found its way into Doris’ hands thanks to Kevin Laird, a sharp-eyed, self-proclaimed “yeoman of past lives” who was salvaging for Urban Ore at the time. The film won Best Editing at the 2015 Filmstock Film Festival in Arizona, screened at the 2016 Mill Valley Film Festival and is archived at U.C. Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. It’s available for purchase on DVD at the store’s front counter.
Moe’s Books, located at 2476 Telegraph Avenue, is celebrating its anniversary this Saturday, October 12th from 12pm to 6pm with special edition fortune cookies, snacks, prizes and a raffle. Calle Ocho will be playing live Cuban son, danzon, bolero and jazz.
To activate THE SNAPCHAT filter, click here and install Snapchat if you don’t already have it on your mobile device.
The filter will be active in your filter menu for 48 hours and can be reactivated after the 48 hours is up.
On the right is Moe’s Books Snapchat Filter in action with Doris Moskowitz and Johnny Williams.
Get the filter today, take a snap with a friend and share it with #MoesBooks!
Hat’s off to Moe’s for 60 years of radical bookselling in Berkeley!
quirkeley.com 