About This Project
Written by Mina Blyly-Strauss
Above is a picture of me as a young child on the counter of Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore with my dad (Don Blyly) to the right and his friend and long-time employee, Scott Imes, to the left. Uncle Hugo's predated me by almost a decade, having been started in Minneapolis in 1974 by my dad. He started Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore a few years later, though still before I was a glimmer in anyone's eyes. This being the case, I grew up never knowing a world without Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's.
Early in the morning on May 30th, 2020 Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's bookstores were burned to the ground during the social unrest that followed the May 25th police killing of George Floyd. In a matter of hours, a resource that many had been accustomed to being there was gone. While the loss of the stores pales in comparison to the loss of life that had happened a few days before less than a mile away--along with the larger systematic injustices that it bought to the forefront of national consciousness--Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's loss was keenly felt by many. In the following days, former employees and customers visited the site, going through their own grief cycles.
I'm recognized as the photographer in the family. When the stores burned down, my dad asked me to go and document the losses for insurance. In the process of doing so over multiple days (it took a while for different parts of the building to cool enough to be entered), I encountered many people at the site. Often with tears in their eyes, they'd ask what I was doing and when they found out that I was the daughter of the owner they'd start telling me what the stores meant to them. Similar stories were popping up on Facebook as well. I asked my dad for permission to put together a storytelling project where people could share their stories about the stores and what they meant to them.
The stories you will find on this website were submitted specifically for this storytelling project. They are but a small subset of the stories about what Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's have meant to people that are out there in the world.
Early in the morning on May 30th, 2020 Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's bookstores were burned to the ground during the social unrest that followed the May 25th police killing of George Floyd. In a matter of hours, a resource that many had been accustomed to being there was gone. While the loss of the stores pales in comparison to the loss of life that had happened a few days before less than a mile away--along with the larger systematic injustices that it bought to the forefront of national consciousness--Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's loss was keenly felt by many. In the following days, former employees and customers visited the site, going through their own grief cycles.
I'm recognized as the photographer in the family. When the stores burned down, my dad asked me to go and document the losses for insurance. In the process of doing so over multiple days (it took a while for different parts of the building to cool enough to be entered), I encountered many people at the site. Often with tears in their eyes, they'd ask what I was doing and when they found out that I was the daughter of the owner they'd start telling me what the stores meant to them. Similar stories were popping up on Facebook as well. I asked my dad for permission to put together a storytelling project where people could share their stories about the stores and what they meant to them.
The stories you will find on this website were submitted specifically for this storytelling project. They are but a small subset of the stories about what Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's have meant to people that are out there in the world.
Photo Credits: Mina Blyly-Strauss
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