BY TEQUILA MINSKY | The community had been forewarned of the imminent closing of St. Mark’s Bookshop, whose sales were down and debts high. For a few weeks, a bold sign, stating, “Clearance Sale — 50% OFF — CASH ONLY,” beckoned from the front window of the E. Third St. literary refuge, the third and last location of this iconic neighborhood institution.
Then another sign appeared in the window: “Our last day open: February 28, 2016, Thank you for your years of patronage.”
By late afternoon Sunday, there was a steady trickle of regulars and the simply curious, some looking to get bargains, some there for a final farewell.
One man, his unicycle in hand said, “I’ve had a credit of $3.19 for 26 years. They say it’s still good.” He was there to use his credit.
A younger man, Chris Stewart, 24, was perusing the spartan shelves.
“I went to the Stuyvesant St. location a lot when I was a student at Cooper Union,” he reflected, praising the store’s art book selection. His mother — who was choosing note cards to buy — and dad from New Jersey were there, too. They were all in town visiting his younger sister, a college freshman, who found two books to buy.
One Upper West Side woman and a friend spent quite a while going over the eclectic, though by then very thin, book inventory, including back issues of specialty publications. While she wouldn’t give her name, she said she works for the “small business” division at City Hall and was both interested in books and bearing witness to yet another closing of a New York institution that had meant so much to a community.
Amy Sheridan, who lives nearby, walked out with four books. She was really feeling the loss.
“I’m a voracious reader,” she said. “I read 70 books last year.”
“It’s so sad,” she continued. “We’re supposed to buy books online. I don’t like Amazon or Barnes & Noble to make choices of what the whole country can read.”
She valued the variety and accessibility of books she had found at St. Mark’s.
“You can’t peruse a book [online],” she noted.
Judy Chou, another neighbor, emphasized as she was adding to her stack of books and journals to buy, “There’s something special in this place where you can smell and touch the books.”
Another local, artist Stan Gaz spoke of the special creative feeling inside the place.
“You don’t get that in most bookstores,” he noted.
His companion said this was a store where neighborhood artists could sell their books.
“I have a number of small artist-made books I bought when St. Mark’s was on St. Mark’s [Place],” she said, though adding, “I just don’t have room in my apartment to buy more.”
“A lot of creative people liked to come here,” Gaz reflected, wistfully.
