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Real-estate development forces Glad Day to close

by Michael Bronski

SAD DAY: with the closing of a bookstore, the gay community also lost an institution.

The Glad Day Liberation Bookshop shut its doors for good at 6 p.m. last Monday. Like the store itself, Glad Day's demise had an element of the perverse. While many independent bookstores struggled for years in the face of competition from chains and online sellers, Glad Day's faithful and steadily growing clientele had kept the small business prosperous. Yet Boston's skyrocketing real-estate market killed this community institution.

Owner Jearld Moldenhauer and manager John Mitzel have been frantically looking for a new location since they were told in April that their lease at 673 Boylston Street would not be renewed because the building had been sold to a developer who intends to convert it into luxury condominiums. But they discovered that in this tight real-estate market, even a financially successful gay bookstore is not a welcome tenant. Many of the locations they were shown were untenable ("We choose not to rent a space with asbestos walls and no fire exit," says Mitzel, with his usual dry irony). And their application for a desired space on Bromfield Street, two doors down from Glad Day's first location -- a space managed by one of Boston's major real-estate companies -- was finally turned down, after weeks of foot-dragging, for "not having the right financials." When Mitzel asked another agent what this meant -- Glad Day, after all, was a profitable and growing business with a two-decade history of community support -- he was told that in Boston most rental companies want national chains with deep pockets, so if they have to sue to get the rent, the chain will just cut a check. The result? Boston now has 20 Starbucks. Will they all last? Probably. Do they make our neighborhoods more interesting? Probably not.

Sure, you'll still be able to get any book Glad Day sold from Amazon.com, but you will not find its extensive collection of small-press, university-press, and foreign titles on the shelves of any other Boston store. And that's not the only loss. The reality is that Glad Day was more than just a bookstore: it was a community center and a focal point for queer Boston. Several dozen times a week, staff would answer calls from people looking for AIDS services, gay hotels, or community meetings. Many local public and school libraries would make twice-a-year shopping trips, looking to Mitzel for advice about what books on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues to add to their collections. It was also an outlet for tickets to local gay- and lesbian-oriented events, as well as a drop-off site for informational leaflets on everything from safer sex to meetings for gay Jews.

Last Monday afternoon, faithful customers came in to say goodbye to Mitzel and the staff. Older gay men who had been shopping at Downtown Crossing stopped in with their shopping bags. Two lesbians were given large plastic post-office bins to transport their newly bought loot to their truck. The phone rang constantly with people wanting to say goodbye, or new customers -- who had no idea what was happening -- calling to see whether a small-press poetry book or the new Judy Garland biography was available. In the midst of it all stood Mitzel, like a cross between a mother superior and a resort-hotel social director. As always, he was ready to hear anyone's story, complaint, or gossip as he kept his staff busy, moved books around on shelves, managed the crowds, and made sure that everyone was happy, or at least satisfied. "What I'll miss most," he said, "are the people coming in with their stories. Where are they going to go now to pick up a book, maybe look through some porn, and just relax and talk to one another?"

Although the atmosphere was frenzied, there was no sense of resignation. Mitzel talked about opening up a new store, a project he will begin after taking a few weeks off and getting some much-needed rest. He looked around and told a customer, "Do you know that we have a couple of dozen regulars who would, as a matter of course, bring in homemade cookies, boxes of candy, even catered platters just to thank the staff for being here?" This is what never happens at Barnes & Noble. This is what made Glad Day rare and extraordinary.