A Queer Bookstore in New York Needs Rescuing — Someone Is Trying
Question: how many queer bookstores do you know of currently operating in Manhattan? The answer, before this week, was one. After April 30, it could be zero.
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division — "the Bureau," to those who know and love it — has operated since 2012 inside the LGBTQ Community Center in Greenwich Village. It was founded by Donnie Jochum and Greg Newton as a space of culture and community: not just shelves of books, but events, readings, a place where queer literature is not a niche but the main language. Now Jochum and Newton are moving out of the city, and the Bureau closes April 30 unless someone takes the reins.
That someone exists. Jules Wernersbach, owner of Hive Mind Books in Bushwick, Brooklyn, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise $50,000 by June 1. The goal: acquire the Bureau, hire paid staff at both stores, build an e-commerce site, upgrade point-of-sale equipment, and reopen a café on the first floor of the Community Center that closed four months ago. A bookish, ambitious rescue operation.
I want to pause here because I want us to understand what is actually happening: this is not just a nice story of independent solidarity. This is a story happening in 2026, while government funding cuts attack public libraries, while anti-trans legislation multiplies across dozens of states, while access to certain literature continues to be the subject of legal battles. Queer bookstores are not luxury or niche; they are infrastructure.
"It's vital that we preserve this space of queer community and culture in New York City," Wernersbach told Publishers Weekly. You could call that obvious. You could also call it necessary. The Bureau's shelves have been holding something more than books for twelve years. The question now is whether enough people will hold them back.
