BANKSTREET BOOKSTORE FINDS NEW HOME AFTER BEING PRICED OUT
Bankstreet Bookstore on 112th street, whose rent is set to skyrocket, will move into a new home on 107th street, the store announced today on its website and Facebook page.
“Two and a half years ago Andy Laties was selected to replace Bank Street Bookstore’s irreplaceable longtime manager, Beth Puffer. His task was to help save the bookstore from closure after years of rent increases had eroded its sustainability. Today he is delighted to report that a new storefront on the corner of 107th Street and Broadway has been secured — at a dramatically reduced rent. The Bank Street Board of Trustees and our new president Shael Polakow-Suransky, have arranged for the bookstore to move there early next year. Bank Street Bookstore will continue, with your support, to serve you for many years to come.
Bank Street Bookstore will say goodbye to its current location at 112th and Broadway in March 2015. The new location is at 107th and Broadway.”
Bankstreet also announced that it will be holding a series of “markdown sales” before the move and start a membership program called the “Friends of Bankstreet.”
The news was broken by the New York Times on Monday, in an article referring to a mini-revival for the disappearing Upper West Side bookstore. The article quoted our piece on Book Culture, which is opening a new location on Columbus between 81st and 82nd.
Photo via Bankstreet Bookstore Facebook page.
That’s good news. If they’re taking over the location on the northeast corner of 107th/Broadway, where the florist used to be, they’ll be a welcome replacement.
That’s the store that bumblingly turned classic old Moon Palace into a bank by themselves boosting the rent offering but then chickening out and expanding upstairs instead. Their books for boys are terribly emasculating, all about environmental activism instead of making big sparks. The bookstore up the street was so fossil hippie biased that the owner nearly burned it down while getting stoned, according to a gal who worked there a few years ago. These shops turn kids and young adults into little Orwellian fascists, cheering for the establishment in which 1950s style conformity is back in earnest. They do not teach rational thinking in their nonfiction sections, only partisan politics and debasement of critical thinking itself as being but a social construct, just another arbitrary power play. In other words they dumb people down under the guise of rebellion against clear thinking.
-=NikFromNYC=-, Ph.D. in chemistry with top organic division student honor (Columbia)
A great location with many large windows, the new store will hopefully attract new shoppers as well as keeping the old faithfuls happy. Spreading the book love all around the UWS!
The current lack of book stores is a sad statement for upper westsiders! We miss, among others, Shakespear & Co. I’m delighted that Bank Street Bookstore will move to 107th & B’way and that”Book Culture” will open a new location on Columbus (81-82nd Sts)