The bookish Upper West Side wants this chapter closed.
The overflowing tables of sidewalk book vendor Kirk Davidson, 60, have rankled residents for years, prompting a new NYPD crackdown on the “blight” of Broadway.
Cops confiscated nearly 2,000 tomes from Davidson in the past two weeks, saying he was the No. 1 source of complaints in the 20th Precinct, which stretches from West 59th Street north to West 86th Street.
“I’ve been here since April,” Capt. Timothy Malin, the precinct’s commander, told The Post. “There is not a week that has gone by where somebody in this community has not brought his name up to me at least once.”
On the West Side Rag blog, residents have griped that Davidson has harassed women passersby from his post at the corner of Broadway and 73rd Street, blasted music from a boom box and puffed away on a smelly cigar.
“He is an occasionally violent street person, who cloaks his ‘living’ in that spot where he drinks, pees and curses at people, in the idea, but not reality, of being a bookseller,” a woman calling herself Harriet wrote on the blog. “In fact he is more like a bookseller’s pimp, as he runs the street with an iron hand.”
A woman walking by Davidson last week said “there’s so much garbage that’s generated. The books stay out all night . . . the books are moldy.”
Another resident said she didn’t understand the fuss.
“Its not like he’s selling porn,” retiree Joyce Van Patten said.
The city allows vendors to sell books without a permit so long as they keep it to one table no more than 8-feet long.
“He was up to five tables recently,” Malin said.
Officers wearing gloves packed up the books overnight when Davidson left them unattended.
Davidson, 60, received five summonses for storing moveable property on the sidewalk and faces fines of up to $150 a pop.
He took a truck to the 20th Precinct station house on Aug. 3 to collect his books, which were not held as evidence, and immediately set out four tables, one holding records albums.
He said he has two helpers and will sometimes enlist a homeless person to claim that they are each running one of the tables.
He now sleeps on a battered easy chair near his tables, saying he is afraid to go home, lest cops take the books again. A suitcase sat next to the chair earlier this month, along with a thermos and two jugs of water.
Someone complained to police about Davidson using a water jug to shower and allegedly urinating in a cup and tossing it on the street.
Davidson, who has been selling books for 33 years, thinks the complaints are racially motivated.
“As long as I’ve been black, they’ve been complaining,” he said.
City records show he last received a summons in August 2016 and still owes the $50 penalty.
Davidson also said he’s successfully sued the city and won, but would not disclose the amount of money.
Malin denied this was a racial issue and he said he visited Davidson at 1 a.m. on Aug. 4 to see if they could reach a resolution, but had no luck.
Davidson told The Post he wasn’t leaving.
“What have these books ever did to anyone?” he said.