The original structure, erected on Market Street in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1932, was a quaint combination slaughterhouse and ice cream parlor, with a distinctive archway lit by forty-two hanging lamps. Although business was slow during daylight hours, the building swelled to life after dark, due in large measure to a brothel located in the cellar. The illegal business flourished until 1940, when it was closed down by local authorities. The building stood vacant for twenty-five years until, in 1965, it was subdivided by the flamboyant French developer Bennie Péret-O’Lay, and became a bustling beauty salon known as The House of Wax, and a hippie head-shop.
These businesses gave way in the early 1970s to Break Wind Books, specializing in Civil War memorabilia, books on local history, and Southern Fried “Chick-Lit.”
Finally, in 1989, the Paris-based publishing conglomerate, LSN International, purchased the property for 6.2 million dollars, and proudly evicted the former tenant. Then, on the first day in April of that year, Le Scat Noir Bookshop & Café threw open its doors to a city starved for literary nightlife. The address also served as home to this journal, with its editorial offices located below street level in the quarters of the former brothel. Here, an underpaid staff of a dozen employees worked at dimly-lit desks, producing the infamous weekly newspaper, Le Scat Noir, while music from the café above shook the walls.
The bookstore quickly became known around Charlottesville as the place to go for experimental literature, pataphysics, and rare books on avant-garde art. Smoking on the premises was not only permitted but encouraged, as patrons were greeted at the door by an attractive young lady in a tank-top dispensing free cigarettes and souvenir ashtrays with the painted slogan “Where Art & Literature Hit the Fan.”
The bookstore was open 24/7 and only closed when repairs were necessary due to frequent fire-damage.
In May of 1994 the premises were raided by the ACDC (Albemarle County Decency Committee) and Le Scat Noir’s manager, M. Norman Conquest, was arrested, charged with selling obscene books and for “public indecency.”
A large poster was confiscated as evidence from the storefront display window. The poster had hung there prominently since opening day yet somehow went unnoticed (or untranslated) for six years. The poster in question featured a charming, 19th century illustration of a defecating dwarf holding a pile of tomes, with a headline: “Bibliothèque de la merde noire.”
Apparently Miles B. Cravanaugh, Mayor of Charlottesville, was offended by the art when he spied it during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a restaurant across the street.
Today, the historic building stands vacant—a mere shell of its former self—haunted by the ghosts of scat past. Bookworms, like disaffected zombies, trance by the boarded windows and graffiti. Severed electrical cords dangle above the entrance like alien tentacles, while the doorway is littered with empty beer bottles and shards of The Hook, a feeble-minded “alternative" weekly.
LSN lives on, of course, at this undisclosed location where you’re keeping it alive.
