Old Books and Videos

Shady arcades! After my visit to the biggest one in Kadikoy, here we are with one of its counterparts on the European side of Istanbul.

Such places are havens of cultural detritus from past decades. The stores in such arcades are loaded with old records, past issues of every magazine imaginable, kitsch posters, broken down toys, VHS tapes and the like. If you are one of those indie people who find this kind of stuff cool and trendy, then you will feel like you are in paradise.

This video store, whose name translates into "Lightning Video", is one of the last remaining video clubs in Istanbul, which used to be as common as coffeehouses during the golden age of VHS in Turkey during the 1980s. The guys working here stock copies every obscure, unknown and cult Turkish movie you can imagine...

...and some you cannot.

Here is a close up of one of Simsek Video's shelves. The titles include gems such as "We Need Husbands," and "Three Angry Warriors."

Other places in this bazaar of trash include this shop, which had the poster of an ultra-nationalistic film about the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Titled "The Eagles of Victory in Cyprus," this forgotten film's poster has each and every gun blasting forth flames like so many ejaculations.

The same shop also sold numerous Turkish "science" books from the 1960s and the 1970s. This one, called "Universe/Evolution and Spiritualism", was one of the most interesting. Written by two people called Davut Targan and Güner Ünal, it apparently tried to reconcile science and especially evolution with something like Sufism.

I still regret not buying it, which is why, some day, I hope to return to the depressing confines of this interesting place.