Bluestockings

The Bluestockings storefront, on the corner of Stanton Street and Allen Street on the Lower East Side, is marked by a small blue awning displaying the name in graffiti-type letters, with a green bench next to the door. Beside the bench, a small stand contains a few newspapers, such as The Indypendent, “a free paper for free people.”
From online information, I was under the impression that the full title of the store was something like “Bluestockings Radical Books,” but co-owner Kimmie David set me straight. “The name of the store is Bluestockings, one word, no spaces,” she said. “People like to add other adjectives to it, to define it, but we feel no great urge to do so.”
Bluestockings carries books unlike any other bookstore I’ve seen in the city. Their genre labels vary from US election politics to gay erotica to disability rights to New Left and Sixties literature. A focus on the political is immediately apparent, and Bluestockings gives no illusions of objectivity; I saw lots of Howard Zinn, and a whole section of books about how Bush stole the 2000 election.
The store is small and brightly-lit, but in no way overly packed; there’s a luxurious amount of walking space between each long shelf. Every book here seems to have been individually and lovingly picked, leaving room for posters and promotions.
Kimmie David is one of the six owners, which surprised me; she doesn’t look any older than I am, standing just over five feet in her neon dress and combat boots. She said that she graduated from Hunter College only a few years ago, and was asked to become one of the owners of Bluestockings after she volunteered there during college.
When I said I attended NYU, she pointed out the upper rows of the wall bookshelves, which hold books for college courses, mostly New School and NYU Gallatin. “Professors will come to us if they would like to support us rather than the college bookstore. We also bring books to campuses, for kids who don’t know their way around the city yet,” she said.
Bluestockings has readings almost every night, and there are also groups that meet monthly at the bookstore, including the Dyke Knitting Circle, which Kimmie said is always encouraging new members, regardless of anyone’s sexual orientation or knitting prowess. “I attend sometimes, and cross-stitch, to change things up,” she said. There’s also a cafe with coffee and pastries, all free trade and organic, of course.
Although fiction and poetry are clearly not the store’s biggest focus, I was fascinated by both sections. Every bookstore I’ve written on until now has had basically the same fiction section: lots of Beatnik writers, modern cult classics. No Beats here at Bluestockings, which I imagine is due to their infamous chauvinism. The store’s fiction and poetry is a multifarious collection, each book in some way controversial, most left-leaning but without any propaganda-like air. Some books by established authors were present, but never their famous work: Mark Twain was represented only by an illustrated copy of “The War Prayer,” an obscure anti-war parable published after his death. I found Bluestockings to have its greatest charm in that they sell books by authors and poets who haven’t made it yet, which makes the commitment to equality they advertise themselves as having all the more believable.