A gay village, also known as a gayborhood, is a geographical area with generally recognized boundaries that is inhabited or frequented by many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBT) people. Gay villages often contain a number of gay-oriented establishments, such as gay bars and pubs, nightclubs, bathhouses, restaurants, boutiques, and bookstores.
Gloria Marie Steinem is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Edgewater is a lakefront community area on the North Side of the city of Chicago, Illinois six miles north of the Loop. The most recently established of the city's 77 official community areas, Edgewater is bounded by Foster Avenue on the south, Devon Avenue on the north, Ravenswood Avenue on the west, and Lake Michigan on the east. Edgewater contains several beaches for residents to enjoy. Chicago's largest park, Lincoln Park, stretches south from Edgewater for seven miles along the waterfront, almost to downtown. Until 1980, Edgewater was part of Uptown, and historically it constituted the northeastern corner of Lake View Township, an independent suburb annexed by the city of Chicago in 1889. Today, Uptown is to Edgewater's south, Lincoln Square to its west, West Ridge to its northwest and Rogers Park to its north.
Glad Day Bookshop is an independent bookstore and restaurant located in Toronto, Ontario, specializing in LGBT literature. Previously located above a storefront at 598A Yonge Street for much of its history, the store moved to its current location at 499 Church Street, in the heart of the city's Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, in 2016. The store's name and logo are based on a painting by William Blake.
The Leather Archives & Museum (LA&M) is a community archives, library, and museum located in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. Founded by Chuck Renslow and Tony DeBlase in 1991, its mission is "making leather, kink, BDSM, and fetish accessible through research, preservation, education and community engagement." The LA&M is a leading conservator of queer erotic art. Its permanent collection features some of the most iconic LGBT artists of the twentieth century, including most artwork by Bill Schmeling and many works by Dom Orejudos.
Bluestockings is a radical bookstore, café, and activist center located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It started as a volunteer-supported and collectively owned bookstore; and is currently a worker-owned bookstore with mutual aid offerings/free store. The store started in 1999 as a feminist bookstore and was named for a group of Enlightenment intellectual women, the Bluestockings. Its founding location was 172 Allen Street, and is currently located a few blocks east on 116 Suffolk Street.
In Other Words Feminist Community Center was an independent non-profit feminist bookstore, community center and events space in Portland, Oregon. Its mission statement read: "In Other Words inspires and cultivates feminist community, nurturing social justice." Founded in 1993, it closed in 2018.
Firestorm Books is a worker-owned and self-managed "anti-capitalist business" in Asheville, North Carolina. Named after the firestorm, this infoshop operates with an eye on creating a sustainable, radical community event space. Firestorm features regular events, such as film screenings, political and economic teach-ins, local and traveling musicians and community workshops.
The Silver Moon Bookshop was a feminist bookstore on Charing Cross Road in London founded in 1984 by Jane Cholmeley, Sue Butterworth, and Jane Anger. They established Silver Moon Bookshop to share intersectional feminist rhetoric with a larger community of readers and encourage open discussion of women’s issues. The shop served both as a safe space for women to participate in literary events and a resource center to learn about local feminist initiatives. The owners of Silver Moon Bookshop eventually expanded into the publishing field through establishing Silver Moon Books, as well as creating the store newsletter Silver Moon Quarterly.
Portlandia is an American sketch comedy television series starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, set in and around Portland, Oregon, and spoofing the city's reputation as a haven for eccentric hipsters. The show was produced by Broadway Video Television and IFC Original Productions. It was created by Armisen and Brownstein, along with Jonathan Krisel, who directs it. It debuted on IFC on January 21, 2011.
Dorothy Pitman Hughes was an American feminist, child-welfare advocate, activist, public speaker, author, and small business owner. Pitman Hughes co-founded the Women’s Action Alliance. Her activism and friendship with Gloria Steinem established racial balance in the nascent feminist movement.
A Different Light was a chain of four LGBT bookstores in the United States, active from 1979 to 2011.
New Words Bookstore was a feminist bookstore based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It opened in 1974, one of the first feminist bookstores in the United States, and moved to larger premises two years later. It gained an international reputation, and by 1989 was the largest feminist bookstore in the U.S. in terms of sales. After the bookstore closed in 2002, the Center for New Words (CNW) continued its legacy until this organization closed its doors in 2008 and some of its activities were undertaken by Women, Action & the Media (WAM!).
Chicago has long had a gay neighborhood. Beginning in the 1920s there was active homosexual nightlife in Towertown, adjacent to the Water Tower. Increasing rents forced gay-friendly establishments steadily northwards, moving through Old Town and Lincoln Park along Clark Street and on to Boys Town.
Feminist businesses are companies established by activists involved in the feminist movement. Examples include feminist bookstores, feminist credit unions, feminist presses, feminist mail-order catalogs, and feminist restaurants. These businesses flourished as part of the second and third-waves of feminism in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Feminist entrepreneurs established organizations such as the Feminist Economic Alliance to advance their cause. Feminist entrepreneurs sought three primary goals: to disseminate their ideology through their businesses, to create public spaces for women and feminists, and to create jobs for women so that they did not have to depend on men financially. While they still exist today, the number of some feminist businesses, particularly women's bookstores, has declined precipitously since 2000.
Left Bank Books is an independent bookstore located at 399 N. Euclid Street in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. It is the oldest, independently operated bookstore in St. Louis. It was founded by students in 1969 as a leftist collective to sell underground, counter-cultural, feminist, and anti-establishment books, newspapers, and magazines—-the first to do so in the St. Louis region. It was the first bookstore with its name in the United States, and the first exhibiting gallery for children's book illustrator Mary Engelbreit. Left Bank Books sponsors reading groups, book signings, author appearances, and community literary activities. In 2015 the Washington Post named it one of the best bookstores in the United States and in 2017 Real Simple magazine has called Left Bank Books the best bookstore in the state of Missouri.
A Room of One's Own is an independent bookstore located at 2717 Atwood Avenue in Madison, Wisconsin. The store was founded in 1975 as a feminist bookstore and was named after Virginia Woolf's 1929 essay of the same name. A Room of One's Own carries a broad selection of books, with a focus on works by women and non-binary people and the LGBT community.
Womanbooks was a feminist bookstore in Manhattan, New York City. It was founded by Eleanor Batchelder, Karyn London, and Fabi Romero-Oak in 1975 and provided a safe space for women to learn and gather until it closed in 1987. Womanbooks was the second feminist bookstore in New York City, and the first to be inclusive of all women.
Charis Books & More is an independent bookstore located in Decatur, Georgia. The store is the oldest independent feminist bookstore in the Southern U.S. Charis Books was founded in 1974 by Linda Bryant and Barbara Borgman in the Little Five Points district of Atlanta; in 2019, Charis moved to Decatur and became the bookstore of Agnes Scott College. The store specializes in diverse children's books, feminist literature, and LGBTQ literature.
Ann Christophersen is one of the founders of Chicago’s Women & Children First bookstore. As of 2011, it was the largest feminist bookstore in the United States. Together with Linda Bubon, they opened the store in 1979.
