Buying the New Yorker 1986 - page 76

The second edition of the Grove Dictionary is 29 volumes and only costs $995. You can also Subscribe to the online edition for $295 per year. Or you can just go to your local library and enjoy it for free.

The price of Brown & Jenkins Coffee seems to have gone in the other direction. There are about ten different samplers now coming in a range from about $22 to $50. As a bonus the front page gives you a code that you can enter in the checkout. This is a special deal only for folks who order online.

Keeping on the price thing, the Boston Traders' Apparel company seems to have none listed. The deal seems to be that they now only sell to other outlets. There's some implication that you can order bulk from them, but I can't figure out how. And most of their stuff is named after dogs, which makes it fun to try and navigate.

Over the years, I've known a few bow tie aficionados. The thing I've noticed about people who are inclined to wear bow ties is that they are always wearing bow ties. I think that part of the deal is that when you wear a bow tie, lots of people come up to you and say "I see you're wearing a bow tie." Then if you show up the next day with a normal tie, people come up to you and say "So, no bow tie today?" I imagine that it is like being trapped in some sort of Stating the Obvious Jail. Anyway, it seems that John Fields has gone out of business. If you want to go completely nuts on bow ties, check out the International Wooden Bow Tie Club instead.

Archaeological Tours is still going strong. They even have the same logo. There are a few additions to their tour list that might have seemed a bit risky in 1986 -- the Libya trip looks so interesting that my head hurts. You have to call or e-mail for pricing, so they lose a few points for that.