Comments on: Bluestockings, famed bookstore/cooperative, is closing.

Bluestockings, famed bookstore/cooperative, is closing.

99_ — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 19:27:39 -0800

Bluestockings - New York's only queer, trans and sex worker run bookstore - announced today on their website that the store (in person and online) is closing today, with operations to be wound down by the end of the year. It does not appear that any interventions are possible.

The announcement focused primarily on internal issues, but their commitment to being a community resource had long been a source of friction with both neighbors and landlords (archive). Publishers Weekly has some additional details (archive) - with the 'owners' indicating that relations with the existing worker-stewards was a source of friction. There are some screenshots of statements from worker-stewards on X (not linking because the primary sources I could find were just people being jerks) that push back on those representations. For anyone who was relying on Bluestockings for their community services, there is an FAQ with alternatives (including any details for folx who have orders pending). Additional coverage: EV Greive, Lithub

By: limeonaire

limeonaire — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 19:33:45 -0800

By: UltraMorgnus

UltraMorgnus — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 19:42:38 -0800

By: eustatic

eustatic — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:12:10 -0800

damn. i remember taking a break in Bluestockings during all the mass arrests in NYC for RNC. lots of cops with orange fencing wrapping people up, even civilians going to work. someone wandered into the store announcing "I got out"! covered head to toe in grease from being shackled to the ground in the Port Authority bus terminal / temporary prison for 48 hours it was a haven for that person as well. we went back to our reading. .

By: billsaysthis

billsaysthis — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:54:03 -0800

By: socialjusticeworrier

socialjusticeworrier — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 23:09:53 -0800

By: HearHere

HearHere — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 01:01:02 -0800

. where i learned the dokum sit-in [en.wiki] was successful before what went down in jackson, mississipppi [teachinghistory]

By: GenjiandProust

GenjiandProust — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 02:12:25 -0800

By: mersen

mersen — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 02:45:54 -0800

By: GenjiandProust

GenjiandProust — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 03:46:37 -0800

It seems, among other things, like another cautionary tale of having a collective where only some members are listed on legal documents. It's something you really shouldn't delay fixing as happened in this case.

By: wicked_sassy

wicked_sassy — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 03:58:12 -0800

. I loved visiting Bluestockings and finding books by my friends on their shelves. Truly unfortunate loss for radical communities.

By: lalochezia

lalochezia — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 06:03:39 -0800

By: Spike Glee

Spike Glee — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 07:05:16 -0800

By: ivanthenotsoterrible

ivanthenotsoterrible — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 07:19:31 -0800

By: It is regrettable that

It is regrettable that — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 07:26:27 -0800

Boy, that "neighbors and landlords" link makes me retroactively angry:

In late October, Bluestockings received a 15-day "notice to cure" from its landlord, the first step in a commercial eviction process. It lists lease violations such as "unauthorized use of the premises as a medical facility," and states that the bookstore's practice of "permitting homeless individuals to use the basement restroom" and handing out food are creating a "hazardous condition" for residential tenants.

The "medical facility" bit is because they're handing out Narcan, and I don't know the law there, so I won't comment. But how shrivelled does your heart have to be to say that letting homeless people eat and use the facilities is creating hazardous conditions?

By: knownassociate

knownassociate — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 07:38:11 -0800

This is so sad. Another piece of community-oriented NY gone.

By: smelendez

smelendez — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 08:18:36 -0800

It seems, among other things, like another cautionary tale of having a collective where only some members are listed on legal documents. Yeah, from the Publishers Weekly piece especially it sounds like a mess. Does anyone know what this means: The current worker-stewards were offered full ownership this past summer, Espasande said, but were unable to find a financial guarantor to release Sabal and Epasande from liability. This sounds to me like the workers would have had to essentially buy in or show up with a rich benefactor, but I could be misinterpreting. But how shrivelled does your heart have to be to say that letting homeless people eat and use the facilities is creating hazardous conditions? Yeah, it was very depressing to me that the Lower East Side has changed so much that Bluestockings is considered a nuisance business just because they... serve whoever walks in the door.

By: actuallyquite

actuallyquite — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 09:07:42 -0800

By: star gentle uterus

star gentle uterus — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 09:12:24 -0800

Does anyone know what this means: The current worker-stewards were offered full ownership this past summer, Espasande said, but were unable to find a financial guarantor to release Sabal and Epasande from liability. If the Publisher's Weekly article is correct, the business is currently structured as a standard c corp (the most common form of corporation), with Sabal and Epasande being the only two actual legal owners of the corporation. Strangely, they are also apparently personally on the lease, which you'd think would be in the name of the corporation, as well as "other legal documents". The business appears to be deep in a financial hole, behind on rent, payroll, payments to publishers and distributors, etc. So Sabal and Epasande want someone to be a guarantor for what they owe on these debts to free them from any liability before relinquishing ownership though, again, it's odd that they're personally liable at all when they're operating a corporation.

By: jeweled accumulation

jeweled accumulation — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 10:03:31 -0800

This is a shame (this barely covers the depth of the situation). One of my very favorite memories of visiting New York was wandering around on my way to meet a friend, maybe around 8 or 9 at night. I noticed some kind of reading/event happening in Bluestockings and was like "ah, a literary event, my people" and crashed it. The speaker was talking about the history of Wages for Housework and I was like "huh it is weird that they aren't mentioning Silvia Federici at all" until it slowly dawned on me that it was actually THEE Silvia Federici running this powerpoint! It felt so magical and I felt honored that I was able to stumble on something so great.

By: 99_

99_ — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 10:06:47 -0800

If the Publisher's Weekly article is correct, the business is currently structured as a standard c corp (the most common form of corporation), with Sabal and Epasande being the only two actual legal owners of the corporation. Strangely, they are also apparently personally on the lease, which you'd think would be in the name of the corporation, as well as "other legal documents". The business appears to be deep in a financial hole, behind on rent, payroll, payments to publishers and distributors, etc. An unfortunate cautionary tale about how difficult it is work within capitalism when you don't subscribe to its tenets. I would bet they are personally on the lease because the landlord wanted a personal guarantor (since a c-corp could dissolve and walk away from a lease - WeHo has 3-4 big commercial landlords and one of them is notorious for demanding any lessees personally guarantee 100% of the entire lease before signing). Would love to hear from any folks who know c-corp stuff more about how they might be doing this practically. I assume the worker-stewards are issued shares of the c-corp? But since it's a money losing business, you are basically getting a slug of debt, and the lease is even outside of that, so each new owner has to absorb some portion of that liability (because I guess if you had 5-6 new worker-stewards become owners, they could vote to relocate the business and leave the current owners holding bag on the lease).

By: klanawa

klanawa — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 10:28:09 -0800

But how shrivelled does your heart have to be to ~~say that letting homeless people eat and use the facilities is creating hazardous conditions~~ be a landlord?

By: star gentle uterus

star gentle uterus — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 11:48:02 -0800

99_ You'd have to get into the weeds of the actual text of the COI, bylaws, Board motions, etc. The article says:

According to the store's bylaws, worker-stewards "have to become owners" after three months (which could be extended to six months

But Epasande said the bylaws were often not followed and workers kept asking for extensions to avoid the liability/responsibility of legal ownership, but who knows if that's accurate, though it's not unbelievable that some or many workers didn't actually want to be owners on record. It's also not clear what "have to become owners" means without seeing the bylaws. Does every worker get an equal number of shares? How would that work? Being an "owner" of a corporation could mean getting a single share. Who drafted and approved these bylaws in the first place? What does the COI say? Are there other agreements involved? Really, even as a well-meaning anti-capitalist collective, sitting down with a lawyer and hashing out these basic questions upfront would have been well worth the initial cost to avoid exactly situations like this.

By: Flight Hardware, do not touch

Flight Hardware, do not touch — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 13:46:14 -0800

Oh my god, just looking at the list of book covers that comes up when I click on the website. And I didn't know about the store at all. There are a few similar institutions I've found in Philly, but I'm just too young in my queer awakening to have known these amazing community creations and resources. And it's going away, like far too many others.

By: reedbird_hill

reedbird_hill — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 16:30:28 -0800

There are a few similar institutions I've found in Philly, but I'm just too young in my queer awakening to have known these amazing community creations and resources. I'm in my 50s, so there is probably some amount of nostalgia talking here, but Wooden Shoe is great - I try to stop in every time I'm in town.

By: soulsailor

soulsailor — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 20:28:29 -0800

I'm so sorry for the loss of a center of community that I wasn't even aware of until this very moment. I was involved in a food co-op, years ago, that grew wonderfully, serving a larger and larger community, managed by a cadre of less than a dozen paid employee/managers, all of whom were working for the minuscule minimum wage, until a member/customer accused the co-op's accountant of theft, who then quit. As the organization was completely under-capitalized, operating "on float," it was bankrupted in just over a month, the term of the "float" offered by suppliers, and all those years of beautiful energy drifted away like smoke on the breeze.

By: brainwane

brainwane — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 20:36:58 -0800

Hell Gate NYC covered this situation in a news article (paywalled) and podcast episode.