A gay bookstore isn’t just a bookstore where they have books about gay people. It’s a central clearing house for the community. A place where young people can go to find support. It’s the front line of community service and information, a touchstone, a nexus. If you’re new in town, if you’re coming out, if you need help and don’t know where to go, you go to the gay bookstore. That’s where you find out about the help lines, the support groups, the good discotheques, sometimes even the Village itself.
That was the first really gay place I ever went. I remember when they were on St-Laurent. I discovered Dykes To Watch Out For there. I bought my first gay pride flag there. I bought my first pride necklace, magnets, pride pins there. I bought all my lesbian comedy there. I have right here in my purse a guidebook to Spain I bought there.
I remember finding their address in the guidebook a friend gave me when I left Winnipeg for Montreal. I remember walking past it one or two times, its rainbow facade in between the boutiques on St-Laurent Street, before screwing up my courage and walking through the door into the narrow little store. I remember going in there, having France (the manager) smile at the 16-year-old little gay boy I was, help me find books and resources and help me out.
They’re transferring a number of their titles to Priape, which is a gay sex store. Like a kid is really going to be able to go in there to find their copy of “Now That You Know” or XY magazine.
They’re not just a business, but the business that they have to do is dragging them to closure. And I feel so damn impotent and useless.
Now Montreal - Montreal, the San Francisco of Canada - is not gonna have a gay bookstore.
Matt, you’re right, that does suck in so many ways, none of them fun!
One of my favourite bookstores is closing too, the Librairie Hermes on Laurier. The concentration of bookstores combined with the quasi-monopoly situation in the press these days is sort of ominous.
Damn that’s a pity, but at the same time I always have mixed feelings when something like this happens. I mean this is what (most) lgb activists have been working to achieve for the past half century. Major mainstream outlets are now carrying a varied selection of lgb litt. I agree that its always a pity tho when the “local” shuts down. On the point of newbie-queers, is there not a gay-house in Montreal? Like a drop in community center? In Dublin, the community free-mag is available to pick up in all the main bookstores in town, and in Sweden the two free-mags are also available in many stores in town, and also in every library in the country. Is there not some similar system in CA ?
Damn, I always hate to hear about another small non-chain bookstore closing. The world needs MORE small, friendly bookstores where the owner or manager will know you, and will recommend books to you.
I’m not gay, but I do like science fiction and fantasy and role-playing games, and I enjoy the small book-and-game stores that cater to that niche.
Sure, it’s fun to browse Amazon, but it’s a damn lonely pursuit, too.
Yeah, it sucks. Small bookstores are dying, and small special-interest bookstores especially. In the past few years, DC just lost one of its two gay bookstores and also a mystery bookstore. Sorry to hear about Androgyny, Matt.
You know, there is a community centre apparently, but it’s rather obscure - so obscure, in fact, that I don’t know where it is. It would probably be easier to find the universities’ gay groups than this one. But when I get back to town, I’ll check it out and if it’s any good, I’ll start promoting it as the alternative to L’Androgyne.
(BTW, since when were they Androgyny? Just noticed that in my quotation. As far as me or any of my anglo friends were/are concerned, they were always L’Androgyne.
Anyway, scott evil, if you’re listening, we should definitely make a stop at L’Androgyne’s closing sale a feature of Pride Minidope…)
Sorry to hear about that matt . As other posters have said, it is always a shame when a local non-chain place closes. Maybe the used bookstore s will be able to hang on a while longer.
BTW, if anyone here is ever in Lawrence, Kansas(I’m in Topeka) and if you like mysteries especially, don’t forget the Raven Bookstore. It’s a non-chain place I love, and, ominously, a Borders was recently built down the street. Ugh.
When I first got to Montreal at 19, I didn’t know anyone at all. Didn’t even have a place to stay. It was the woman behind the counter who told me where things were. She even told me about Project 10, the gay youth group. That’s where I met most of my close friends here – including matt_mcl.
During the years I was too poor to buy books, I would make pilgrimages to L’Androgyne. I would step inside and feel refreshed. The small town where I grew up, there were no gay bookstores, and walking into L’Androgyne reminded me of everything I’d been through, and how nothing I was going through then was worse. It reminded me how far I’d come.
I remember every book and every product I ever bought there – it wasn’t many, but still. I got my Queer Theory textbooks there, ordered JT Leroy’s Sarah. Got my first dark, trashy Poppy Z Brite paperback there.
sigh
Ordering things through Paragraphe just won’t be the same…
matt Pride mini-Dope? Isn’t the store closing before Pride? In any case, I took the Monday off after Pride … to recover. I think I’ll be going with my RL friends, though. Not sure, but I’ll make a point to see you, Hamish, and andygirl and her posse of lesbians at some point.
Anyway, I emailed you this, but it bears repeating here, to point out how L’Androgyne was such an important touchstone in Montreal queer life.
My best friend, Ryan, was in Poland five years ago - one stop as he was backpacking through Eastern Europe. He didn’t have that international gay guide (Hercules? I forget). So he called me from Krakow and asked me to call L’Androgyne. He had friends there, and he wanted them to look up some queer places in Poland. I called L’Androgyne, mentioned Ryan’s name, and they were all like, “Oh, Ryan! How is he? Where is he now?” They then proceeded to list some queer places in Poland where he could go. He ended up finding a rich queer underground there, and met some nice guys, so he tells me.
Like I said in my email, you can’t get that kind of thing at fucking Chapters.
They call it a community centre – there ought to be a regulatory agency that restricts use of that phrase.
They coordinate various gay-related organisations. They operate a library open to these organisations. Not one of these organisations holds regular meetings open to the general public. They don’t want the public in there – they insisted on this, when I did a mini-feature on them for one of the Link’s queer issues.
Vancouver has a little place at Thurlow and Davie where people can meet, sit on couches, talk, and drink coffee in a quiet atmosphere. They run the main gay youth group. That is a community centre. Toronto has something similar.
Nope, although I’m glad to hear they’re doing alright. I remember my first time there, too. I’d never seen a gay neighbourhood, up until I went to the west end
I meant the Gay and Lesbian Community Centre. It’s been seven years since I’ve been there but please tell me it still exists. That would be too much bad news if it didn’t
<aside> You live in Richmond and seem to know something about Vancouver’s GLBT community. I’m wondering – do you know Bastian – he’s very active in the community and lived in Richmond a long time </aside>
Actually, Hamish, I have to admit that I don’t really know much about the gay community here. (except for the fact that the gay part of town here seems to be concentrated along Davie Street, and the club of choice seems to be Celebrities) Although I must say that the court troubles (customs holdups, etc.) of the Little Sisters Bookstore have been well documented here in the papers.
I don’t know your friend, sorry. (I don’t know much, as I’ve said) Maybe I’ll ask my sister’s friend if he knows Bastian… who knows? He might…
I found out a lot about Little Sister’s when I was doing a feature story for the University of Victoria’s Martlet newspaper. Talked to Janine Fuller about the books that were stopped at the border.
I got to see one, and I was pretty surprised – it was a children’s book entitled Belinda’s Bouquet. No sexual content at all. Just that a little boy in it has two mothers.
Granted, my sister will think it’s weird that I’m asking her to ask her friend about your friend, but such is life, and connections. Then again, I just asked her. She does think it’s weird… so weird, in fact, that she won’t ask. Sorry.
There was quite the uproar or something about Belinda’s Bouquet and two other books (IIRC, Asha’s Mums and One Dad, Two Dads, Blue Dads, Brown Dads) a while ago. Something about an openly gay teacher in Surrey fighting the school library/district policy on these types of books. Can’t remember the guy’s name, though… James Chambers?
They then proceeded to list some queer places in Poland where he could go. He ended up finding a rich queer underground there, and met some nice guys, so he tells me.