Down By Bluestockings

By Ian Kessler 

 LOWER EAST SIDE, Nov. 17 - The sun has already set as I walk along East Houston Street. The sky has a streak of hot red clouds on the horizon. Neon headlights and ruddy billboards light the scene of a once grungy neighborhood. 

A turn onto Allen Street brings a gush of golden leaves as they whip around the corner and down the darkening street. I am instantly transported back to a month earlier. A couple of my friends and I were wandering through Chinatown but couldn’t figure out what to do. One had just turned twenty one that week but the other didn’t have an ID. She’s twenty. 

My friend Rachel said we should go check out this “really cool anarchist bookstore!” Apparently it was close by and we couldn’t help but be curious.

We walked through the doors of Bluestockings and it was even better than the cliche I had imagined. This was not just any bookstore. The floor was packed but quiet. An author was on tour speaking the subject her new book, a woman who had given her life for the Cuban Revolution.

On this night a month later, I walk through the doors yet again. The store is calm this time and I’m free to peruse without the hassle of the crowd. A couple members sort books as others work the counter and coffee. The walls are covered in counter-culture and OWS art. The shelves are filled with titles on radical feminism, anarchism, race studies, queer studies, Marxism, smut and even sci-fi. They have mainstream titles too, of course. Many would certainly be banned in a more repressive country. Some authors immediately stick out to me: Naomi Klein, Paulo Friere, Chomsky, Foucault, Marx.

The people here are so strange and beautiful. Some bedazzled with stick-and-poked fingers bedecked by avant-garde rings. Others in plain blue collar clothes. I was glad I took off my tie in the F train. 

I walk to the man at the cash register. He is clothed in black, with thin long hair, gauges in his ears and blue tattoos on his arms. I started asking him about the store—about its history. He directed me to a collective member. As I wait to talk to her they offer me some ceylon tea free.

I ask her name, she replies, “My name is Rachel Levy, my pronouns are she/her/hers.” I instantly respond, “Oh my friend who first brought me here’s name is Rachel!” As we introduce ourselves we quickly discover we’re both Jewish. “Shalom!” “Chag sameach!” “It’s all in the tribe!” Definitely a warm hello.

Rachel has been coming to Bluestockings since 2005 and has been working at the store since 2013. During the day she works as a social worker at an HIV clinic. She begins with her well-practiced elevator speech, “Bluestockings is a collectively-run politically progressive trans-inclusionist feminist bookstore, fair trade cafe and community space. Everything we do here revolves around ideals of social justice.” 

Promptly she asking me if I knew what “bluestockings” meant. Too be honest I had no clue. Rachel illuminated me, “Bluestockings was a pejorative term for women who read back in the early 1900s.” 

Turns out despite the trope on feminist bookstores, there are only thirteen remaining in the US and Canada. In the 90s there used to be hundreds! In fact, although founded in 1989, the store almost closed after 9/11 because of financial reasons and the changing neighborhood. In 2003, Brooke Lehman saved Bluestockings. It was reborn as a collective and expanded well beyond its previous mission.

Rachel explains a collective model is practice—social justice practice: “We’re trying to undo the shitty hierarchies of professionalism that take place in a work place. We’re trying to be an environment where people are respected and affirmed and where there is a lot of mutual learning and growth. As opposed to Capitalism which runs off of the labor of others; like there’s an owner and then there’s employees that work for that owner who are inherently going to be exploited because the owner is making money off of them. In a workers coop there’s even investment and there’s not a boss and employees, there’s an even split which undoes some of the shitty elements of capital.”

If you could please, promptly picture some neocon’s head comically popping like a balloon with a whimsical sound effect as it deflates. 

No one at Bluestockings is paid, all funds go to keeping books on the shelves, keeping the lights on and paying the rent. The roughly 70 volunteers, most working on average three hours a week. The business is run democratically. Collective members must be voted in and number four to six people at anytime, bearing the most commitment and responsibility .

A lot of groups and clubs pop up organically, holding events many nights a week. Some being Black & Pink which is an LGBTQ prisoner support group, Radical Educators, a Feminist Bookclub, a Feminist Masculinities class and Icarus Project which is a radical mental health group offering peer support. The space is free for both presenters and participants at events and will never be turned away for lack of money.

Another volunteer later said, “We’re about being able to challenge hegemony and oppression. That just guides what we do here.” Bluestockings is truly a mecca for radical activism in New York City. Even two members of Pussy Riot have held a clandestine event here! 

Bluestockings just signed a five year lease and continues to grow its revenue every year. It hopefully doesn’t seem to be leaving anytime soon.

In the words of Betsy, the store’s longest standing member, “I hope that we’re around forever, I hope that we’re around till New York City’s under water.”