Beloved radical NYC bookstore Bluestockings announced they will be closing in 2025.
After over 26 years in operation on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the radical, feminist bookshop and cafe Bluestockings is closing shop at the end of 2025. The announcement was made on their homepage, as well as on social media:
The phrasing and vagueness of some of this announcement, especially the section on the lack of “consensus around the building principles and practices Bluestockings should embody,” makes me think there’s more to this story than the post is letting on. A number of comments under this post are saying this decision was made without the full input of the entire staff or all the worker-owners. We’ll update you when we hear more, but so much to say, I strongly suspect this isn’t as straightforward as this update makes it seem.
But for now, many of us are mourning the loss of the space, which has been dedicated to more than just selling books. Bluestocking is a collectively owned cooperative, and an event and community space welcoming to marginalized communities with an emphasis on radical politics, justice, and organizing. The name came from an 18th century term for an educated, intellectual woman, usually with radical politics. The bookstore was committed to mutual aid, sharing resources, community care and safety, and was overall a model for how to operate in solidarity with under served neighbors. The collective has worked on projects like helping migrants in shelters get their mail by letting them use Bluestockings as their address or literally saving lives by offering Narcan and test strips.
The closure comes as an “absolute last resort,” according to the announcement, and after worker-owners and staff hitting their “limits of what they can manage in terms of health, disability, and finances.” The announcement also cites the high cost of operating in New York, as well as violence and harassment from people who are against the bookstore and its programming.
The store will plan to will start to sunset their operations, but in the meantime they’re planning to continue selling books and fulfilling orders through the end of the year. Their WithFriends and GoFundMe pages will stay active through December to help in the process of winding down.
It’s an especially searing loss when their are so few spaces left in New York to exist without having to spend money, when books and free speech is under attack everywhere, when the struggle for a free Palestine continues to be brutally crushed, and when trans people are being threatened as state enemies—a cruelty echoed by our incompetent mayor, who is reaching for the “the last recourse of desperate losers”.
Bluestockings will be missed.
