The world’s oldest gay bookstore that is not Barnes & Noble (’cause really, how many times have you cruised those aisles?) is facing imminent demise unless it can raise $50k to rebuild a brick wall that, according to Giovanni’s Room owner Ed Hermance in Philadelphia, is about to fall down and destroy Merv Griffin’s biography!
NB: Does Giovanni’s Room get to claim the “oldest gay bookstore” superlative only because the Oscar Wilde Bookshop in NYC closed?
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Jonathan
I’ve bought many a book at Giovanni’s Room… so sad…
AndTom
I bought my first gay books there
Johnny
This is a great store – I hope they pull through!!
Fitz
If they are asking for public donations, they need to become a community center. I don’t donate to a private business.
prissysissy
C’est la vie!
Jaroslaw
Come on Fitz, all the GLBT businesses where I live host all kinds of free poetry readings, book signings, awareness & political evens, make all kinds of donations every time they are asked. It is not like the owners are driving around in Rolls Royces, at least where I’m at.
Fitz
@Jaroslaw: I hear what your saying… but the right venue is a non-profit community center, IMO.
TANK
So is borders going out of business yet? That bookstore’s pretty damn gay… I can haz book for reading.
Mike
It is said to see. Whenever I visit Philly I always make a point to buy something from there. I bought My “Noah’s Arc” DVD’s from there.
rick
last time i checked the time of the brick and morter bookstore has passed.
you can get all the gay books you could ever want delivered right to your door without leaving the house. all small bookstores are closing.
GranDiva
@rick:
And that’s a good thing?
Brian Miller
Old-fashioned small bookstores are going the way of the dodo. It’s evolution, just like the migration from sexual libertinism of the “gay liberation” era to today’s battle for marriage equality. Times change, and institutions either change with them or die.
Kid A
So much for talk of “not assimilating” and preserving “gay culture.”
Some cold bitches up in here.
homofied
If you ask me the issue is also a lack of solid stewardship of our gay institutions. I see the network of gay bookstores as a huge resource that we will wish we hadn’t let fade. But having been in that world on the business side for a number of years, I can tell you I was not terribly impressed with much of the talent pool behind it. There are great examples out there of bookstores that are thriving in spite of the climate, and I suppose its cliche to say how they are doing it — but just because its obvious doesn’t mean its cliche. The bookstores that serve as venues, and put a lot of energy into the quality of what happens on site are the ones that seem to do well. (Powells in Portland is a great example, as is Kramer’s on Dupont Circle in DC, or Housing Works in Soho, or Busboys and Poets also in DC) The list is long, but short on strictly gay establishments. Look at A Different Light, now hanging on by a toe in SF. For years it has been plagued by poor staffing, spotty inventory, whacky merchandising and a certain malaise with respect to its overall customer experience. To be honest I think the gay bookstores are a victim of their own bad habits — of being the only game in town for years and years, and suffering from a lack of vitality and energy and creativity — and a lack of vision — for what they could be.
rick
@GranDiva: yes. they never have what you want and end up ordering it for you anyway.
galefan2004
The time of brick and mortar shops in general has come to an end. The good ones will always survive simply because they know what they are doing. The bad ones will go out of business. That is a good thing. When you can go to Border’s to get a book that you have to order from a brick and mortar you are very quickly going to chose Border’s instead of the brick and mortar. When it comes to things like books (all the same quality but not always the same price) you are going to chose price>service>product. When the service sucks and the price sucks you simply aren’t going to buy from that store.
Brian Miller
Who says they’re “our” institutions?
They’re the obsolete institutions of 1960s and 1970s gay guys who cruised through the porn mags, but like Playgirl and tea rooms, they’re obsolete and vanishing in the new age of outness.
TANK
@rick:
You’ll never know the joy of losing an afternoon in the strand, or a dark secondhand bookstore.
Ed Hermance
The store has long since raised the $50,000 to rebuild the wall. Hundreds of people put on a wide variety of events–raffle, organ-choral concert, publishers’ row of vendors, read-a-thon, poker tournament,comedy night, women’s publishing forum, benefit dinner with Edmund White, benefit cocktails with Christopher Rice, bake sale, more events, and most importantly “purchases” of bricks ($50) and lintels ($500).
This massive effort which drew support from some thousands of people reminds me of the days 30 years before when the community lent the store the downpayment for its first building and a hundred volunteers renovated that building. People have demonstrated that the store is very important to them.
A bricks-and-mortar showroom for books has obvious advantages over online browsing–someone has selected and displayed the best of the new and backlist titles for you to survey in a few minutes, before you narrow in on what interests you most. By contrast, look up “homosexuality” on amazon and you will find that the first book is “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality,” which title has been first for three years at least.
But gay stores, including ours, are also available online. The American Booksellers Association has made it possible for us to offer any of millions of books and ebooks online. And we are able to create and display unparalleled selections of books. For example, you will find every 2011 book published about black gay men that we have found in one place: http://queerbooks.com/2011-black-gay-mens-literature. You can sign up to receive periodic announcements of new books and movies, the most up to date and complete such lists in our specialties to be found online or off.
Some people take our information (because it is the best) and buy elsewhere. They are stealing our work as surely as a shoplifter, and we of course cannot do this work for nothing.
Thanks for your support.
P.S., I don’t think anyone in the store ever claimed the store is the oldest in the world, though we are clearly the biggest, the best, and the most beautiful.