What Happened to the Park Slope B&N’s Gay & Lesbian Section?
The once-out and proud Gay & Lesbian section of the Park Slope Barnes & Noble has been reduced to a few shelves, tucked into a back corner, Fucked in Park Slope reports. Once fully dedicated and located prominently at the bottom of the escalator, sometime in the last year it became just a few shelves buried in Law and Social Sciences. What took its old spot? Essential Cookbooks.
“Just like the neighborhood population,” the blog reports, “the gays are harder and harder to find.” It’s a simple business decision, you could assume—surely more people in Park Slope these days are buying cookbooks, of all things, than histories of Stonewall? But the blog is disappointed at the loss at least of the awareness the section could bring. “It’s pretty discouraging… especially in a day in age where teen bullying is leading to a high suicide rate of LGBTQIA youth. And where gay marriage is such a hot button issue. You’d think Barnes & Noble would want to build a prominent section to reach out to those causes.” Or at least that Park Slopers would raise a stink if they didn’t!
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