I didn’t mean to open a bookstore. It wasn’t some lifelong dream. I wasn’t the kid who read under the covers with a flashlight or wrote angsty poetry in high school. I liked books, sure—but mostly I liked silence, and bookstores were one of the few places in New York where no one expected small talk.
So when the deli two doors down went out of business and the landlord offered me the lease for cheap—cheap by Brooklyn standards, anyway—I took it. I figured I’d sell a few secondhand books, maybe host the occasional reading, and mostly be left alone.
That was five years ago.
Now, the store is this beautiful mess. One half curated obsession, one half accidental storage unit. We have an entire shelf of books with blue covers (people weirdly love that), a tiny section for “Authors Who Used to Work in Kitchens,” and a box labeled “Books We Regret Ordering.” I still don’t know how 14 copies of a Latvian cookbook showed up here.
People wander in off the street all the time, some with purpose, others like they’ve been magnetically pulled toward something they didn’t know they needed. One guy came in to charge his phone and left with Siddhartha and a date. Another woman asked for something “fun but existential, like if Nora Ephron and Camus had a baby.” I handed her The Unbearable Lightness of Being. She smiled like I’d just handed her her own heart.
There are hard days. A pipe burst last winter and ruined two crates of first editions. The till sometimes doesn’t balance. Amazon looms over us like a smug, unkillable ghost. But then there are afternoons where a stranger brings in a batch of homemade cookies just because “this place feels like home,” and I remember why I stay.
I’m not trying to scale. There’s no five-year plan. If this bookstore survives another year, that’s enough. I’ll keep showing up, unlocking the door, rearranging the display with books I think deserve a second life.
It may not be the bookstore anyone asked for. But it’s here. And in this city—where everything changes overnight—that feels like a small act of rebellion.