On the Lower East Side, a debate is raging over the fate of Bluestockings Cooperative, a community bookstore that is facing eviction.
In addition to selling books, Bluestockings also distributes free Narcan overdose prevention kits.
Some of the bookstore’s neighbors argue that it attracts criminality and harassment to the neighborhood.
But Bluestockings’ supporters say the bookstore’s unconventional initiatives fill a much-needed void in social services amid the city’s worsening drug overdose crisis, and that the bookstore is being blamed for issues with homelessness that have existed in the neighborhood for decades.
Bluestockings has “given people a third space in a city that is rapidly becoming so privatized that there is nowhere to go,” said Salonee Bhaman, a former worker-owner of Bluestockings, which is collectively owned. Bhaman left the store in September after she accepted a full-time job at the New York Historical Society.
The conflict around Bluestockings is a microcosm of debates playing out in slow-motion across the city – and across the country – as cities grapple with issues such as homelessness and safe drug use.
Brandon Del Pozo, an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University and a former NYPD officer, said many schools and pharmacies distribute Narcan, and bookstores are no different.
He said what’s unfolding at the bookstore “is a problem that’s usually lurked in alleyways and the shadows and behind closed doors really being brought out in the light to one location.”
Del Pozo said it’s difficult for cities to mitigate drug use among some homeless people because it requires considerable investments in housing opportunities, mental health services and the medications that keep people off of harder opioids.
“Even for a city with a lot of resources like New York, that’s hard,” he said.
A little bookstore with big goals
Bluestockings was founded as a feminist bookstore on Allen Street on the Lower East Side in 1999. In April 2021,…
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