Pathfinder Bookstore

After seven months at a temporary location, the Pathfinder Bookstore has been rebuilt after it and several other stores in the 2500 block of Pico Boulevard were destroyed in a fire during the spring riots. Donations from publishers, contributions of money and labor from supporters and a year-end boost from sales of books compiling the speeches of Malcolm X helped get the bookstore back on its feet.

Offering works by Fidel Castro, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela, the Pathfinder bookstore for 10 years has been a meeting place for the political left from throughout the city. Although most of the store's activity has been geared toward leftist intellectuals, it has begun to focus on the plight of the unemployed and homeless in the Mid-City area. "I like the bookstore for its symbolic value and as a resource to the community," said Jaime Coyle of the Pico-Union area.

Offering works by Fidel Castro, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela, the Pathfinder bookstore for 10 years has been a meeting place for the political left from throughout the city. Although most of the store's activity has been geared toward leftist intellectuals, it has begun to focus on the plight of the unemployed and homeless in the Mid-City area. "I like the bookstore for its symbolic value and as a resource to the community," said Jaime Coyle of the Pico-Union area.

After seven months at a temporary location, the Pathfinder Bookstore has been rebuilt after it and several other stores in the 2500 block of Pico Boulevard were destroyed in a fire during the spring riots. Donations from publishers, contributions of money and labor from supporters and a year-end boost from sales of books compiling the speeches of Malcolm X helped get the bookstore back on its feet.

Memorial services for Fred Halstead, a Socialist Workers Party activist who was the party's presidential candidate in 1968 and California gubernatorial candidate in 1978, will be held at 4 p.m. June 18 at the Pathfinder bookstore at 2546 W. Pico Blvd. Halstead, 61, a native of Los Angeles, died at his Echo Park home of cancer on Thursday.

His rhetoric was militant: He often condemned the "white man's Christian world" as evil and he rejected integration. Although many Establishment leaders feared his influence, many poor African-Americans found inspiration in his separatist call for economic and political empowerment. Yet in the last year of his life, after a pilgrimage to Mecca, Malcolm X was said to have embraced the idea that blacks and whites could work together.

I despise going to lectures alone, and knew I couldn't drag just any comrade to a discourse titled "Generation X and the Communist Manifesto Today." To make it a memorable evening, I needed an Xer who had actually read the tome. After much searching, I chose Eric. As we enter the Pathfinder bookstore on Pico, Eric tells me he has subtitled the talk "Slackers of the world, unite." Inside, 30 people fill a small room trimmed with posters of Che Guevara.