Here’s a story I wrote for The New Yorker online about the tragic closing of St. Mark’s Bookshop, the bookstore where as a child I bought kid books and as a teen I discovered zines and as an adult had for a brief, shining moment their bestselling book.
A few days ago, a fifty-per-cent-off clearance-sale sign appeared in the window of St. Mark’s Bookshop’s modest storefront on East Third Street, and this time it is really the end. The long-struggling store owes as much as seventy thousand dollars in back rent to the city, plus significant sums to publishers and wholesale distributors. According to the New York State Department of Tax and Finance, it faces an open warrant due to almost thirty-five thousand dollars of unpaid sales tax. Bob Contant, the store’s only remaining owner, told me that the business’s accounts have been frozen thanks to a creditor’s lawsuit; an investor who came on briefly as C.F.O. has also sued the store. The local landlord and longtime St. Marks Place resident Charles Fitzgerald has cooked up a plan to start a new bookshop in the space, which he says would be viable if investors were willing to put up two hundred thousand dollars. Even if that plan comes to fruition, though, St. Mark’s Bookshop as we know it is officially going out of business. This week, friends dropped by to pay their respects, while bargain hunters streamed in to pick the shelves clean. Read the rest here.
