Save St. Mark's Bookshop!

All too often, we're posting around here about the demise of a great bookstore...but now we have the opportunity to help! A petition is going around to save the cultural institution and poetry goldmine that is New York City's St. Mark's Bookshop. We had heard word on the street and posted in fear of their shutdown once before, but now it's confirmed that landlord Cooper Union really is raising the rent. From the petition:

“The St Marks Bookshop, a vital Lower East Side cultural institution, needs a rent low enough to survive. Join the Cooper Square Committee petitioning Cooper Union, the bookstore's landlord, to give St Marks Bookshop a lower rent.”

The St Marks Bookshop has a long tradition in the Lower East Side and serves an admirable and increasingly rare function. St Marks is struggling to pay the market rent that Cooper Union is charging them at 31 3rd Ave. A significant rent concession by Cooper Union could save this irreplaceable neighborhood institution.

Sign the petition here!