Shops in St. George / Stapleton

The only used bookshop on Staten Island, spread through the ground floor of a Bay Street building with cafe tables in among the shelves and a garden out the back. You can play the 33s and 45s on a turntable. The 78s are there too. Fair-trade coffee sits near house plants and a ten-for-ten-dollars CD bin. It is run by the Ganas community, which has been on the island since the 1970s, and the same space puts on poetry readings and open mics. Film screenings use it too.

Wed to Sat, noon to 6pm, later on event nights. Closed Sunday, Monday and Tuesday

A narrow shop on Victory Boulevard stocking the Sri Lankan side of Tompkinsville: teas, curry powders and spices, fresh produce you will not find in a supermarket beside clay cooking pots. A rack holds Sinhala-language newspapers and CDs. Tompkinsville holds the largest Sri Lankan population in the United States and this is one of the two groceries that serves it. It is a shop rather than a kitchen, so it is a ten-minute errand and not a sit-down.

Daily, roughly 9am to 9pm. The shop posts no hours of its own and the figure is from listings, so it is flagged as unverified