An old Life never dies

Back-date magazine dealer Sidney Friedman:

My brother Ben and I run maybe the busiest back-date magazine store in the world. It’s on Sixth Avenue in New York City. We have customers in here fourteen hours a day and we’re famous enough to get mail just addressed: “Old Magazines, near 42nd St.”

A few yards away is the big New York Public Library. You find something in an old magazine there. Can you clip it out? You’d go to jail! Copying takes time. Photostats cost money and don’t come in color. So hundreds of people cross the street and buy from us.

[“Life file . . .” Life, December 14, 1953. Click for a larger view.]

This back-date magazine store sounds like a 1953 Internet.

Yesterday’s Henry led me to this page from Life. Sidney Friedman was right: an old Life never dies. December 14, 1953 lives on at Google Books.