Bluestockings

It’s Spring in New York – that magical, all-too-short stretch of time between Winter’s bracing cold and Summer’s oppressive cloak of heat. My coats are in storage, my windows are propped open, my eyes are itchy, and the nesting instincts of the past year and a half of my life have dissipated. In short – I want to go out and do things!

And finally, we can. After a winter on doctor-mandated baby house arrest, Finnegan is free to roam about the world (aka Brooklyn). We’ve taken him to the park, to the garden center, and on walks in an ever-widening radius from our apartment. Then I got overconfident and tried to take an hour-long walk to nearby dreamland Ditmas Park. It ended with shrieking, spit up, and some unappreciated and unsolicited advice from the neighborhood stoop-sitters!

So now, I’m back to my usual way of doing things without towing along a stroller, bottle, and like three clean just-in-case diapers – working it into my workday. This week, that meant managing to get to and from Bluestockings, a bookstore on the Lower East Side, between an 11-12 status meeting and a 1-2 conference call (someone get me on an episode of How I Get It Done, ha!).

Named in honor of 18th Century shorthand for educated, intellectual women, Bluestockings is owned by a collective, run by volunteers, makes decisions by consensus, and serves as a hub for the city’s activism. I thought it might have shades of Women & Women First, but it didn’t – and not just because special orders take days rather than years to arrive. The space is colorful and lovely, sun streams in through windows overlooking Allen Street, coffee is $1, muffins are vegan, and tote bags encourage people to “Speak Up! This Isn’t A Library.” Unsurprisingly, Bluestockings’ 6000 book selection is heavy on political theory, gender identity, and black studies, but it also has what the store’s website refers to as  “good ‘ole smutty fiction, sci-fi, and poetry.”

So whether you’re looking to do some radical reading or merely seeking an escape hatch from your otherwise corporate existence (just me?), I can’t recommend Bluestockings enough. It was just the anti-establishment palate cleanser I needed yesterday.