Housing Works Bookstore — Local services in New York

My husband and I had our wedding at the Housing Works Bookstore back in Nov 2024 and we highly recommend it to any couples looking for a magical vintage bookstore vibe.

Booking the venue was very easy and we had the pleasure of working with Hollis, the bookstore's Private Events Admin Manager. We are from out of town, so while we had most our interactions with Hollis over email, she was always quick to respond and answered all our questions and concerns. We had a final in-person meeting with her and she walked us through the entire bookstore and helped us finalize all the details. Hollis was amazing!

To book the venue, you will have to become a Visionary Member, but we thought that was so cool as we are able to support the bookstore, back their advocacy work, and even get perks at the bookstore, while having our dream venue.

We also booked a couple vendors that we highly recommend. They are all familiar with the bookstore and are experts at working with the quirky bookstore space.

Chef Cava (caterer) - Chef Cava's food was excellent and he even went out of his way to add Korean elements to our menu since I am Korean. We had most of our interactions over email, but he was always quick to respond! His team was very professional and the service was outstanding. All our guests enjoyed their food :)

DJ Mariko (DJ - insta handle @marikomusic) - DJ Mariko was such as pleasure to collab with. She wants to make sure your night is perfect in the way the music reflects everything you want. She had us fill out an extensive form and met with us multiple times to make sure she knew what we wanted, which we really appreciated. She is very sweet and we can't recommend her enough! We had a very small wedding (~40 people), but she somehow got everyone out to dance all night with her amazing energy and skills.

Sam Arpino (Wedding Planner - Founder of withMavensEvents) - Sam is a creative, organized, and thoughtful planner who listens to her clients and transforms chaotic ideas into a beautiful event, while always respecting their vision. She made sure she used the design of the bookstore to the fullest and brought our wedding design to reality in the bookstore. Thanks to Sam's expertise and vast vendor knowledge, our wedding turned out perfectly, and we couldn’t recommend her enough for any event planning.

RentPatina (furniture rental) - Our wedding planner actually recommended this furniture rental for the bookstore space since we had such a small wedding. RentPatina's furniture really elevated the space and provided areas around the bookstore where our guests could mingle and rest. The furniture was high quality and they were very easy to work with. They brought the furniture on time and quickly came to pick up the furniture when our...

So I've been going to Housing Works Bookstore since 2016, and I'm sad to see how much it has changed. Something about it feels very "gentrified" - they no longer have public restrooms/accessibility (now it's only for employees or paid customers, and it's hidden behind a black curtain which is their way of really making it clear that we don't belong in the bathrooms), they have a 1 hour limit on how long you can sit at the tables in the cafe, the cafe as usual isn't inviting, it feels cold and stuck up for no reason, the upstairs used to have a whole section dedicated to just LGBTQ+ and feminist fiction which is now replaced by clothes that probably so few people are going to buy, and the DVDs are also not queer focused anymore. Essentially, the queerness of this bookstore has been completely washed away to what's now is just a typical pricey thrift store. I can understand why they merged the Housing Works thrift store with Housing Works Bookstore (because of cost-cutting measures?), but it's a pretty jarring combination that doesn't quite work and isn't even aesthetically appealing; sadly, the bookstore suffers for it. The shelves also used to be organized by genre, now all the books are just clumped together in a generalized/alphabetized format so it's hard to find any books that you'd be interested in, and even worse, while still used, they're still books that you can find at any other bookstore in Soho, and cost just as much, you're better off going elsewhere and buying new. I came here as often as I did in the past for the rare/hard-to-find LGBTQ+ books, but there goes that. It's a shame. I always thought the purpose of this organization was to not only have all proceeds go to HIV/AIDS patients and advocacy, but to also be a safe space where folks can use the restroom, be able to sit down, relax, and have a lot of really rare books and DVDs to look at and where they're actually affordable. Now the vibe I'm getting is that they really don't want us there, which is really odd for an organization like this to give off, and the staff are so aloof, like they don't want to be there. I used to be at Housing Works Bookstore for hours and spent a lot on books/dvds but now barely 15 mins is all I can take. What the heck happened to what used to be such a great bookstore and organization? The only thing that hasn't changed at all is their vinyl collection, but everything else is just...not the Housing Works I used to know,...

My husband and I traveled to NYC late July 2017 and stayed in SoHo. As there are few public restrooms, we walked to Crosby street from Broadway to use the restrooms in this bookstore. There were serveral tables of customers. We had to wait in line for the restroom for several minutes, as there were several homeless people using the bathrooms to get ready. While I was in the restroom during my turn, a woman started banging relentlessly on the door. My husband told her twice that there was someone in there. When I came out of the door, she pushed past me into the single stall. I could tell immediately that she was on drugs. We left the store, continuing down the sidewalk and a few minutes later this crazed 6'1 woman came chasing, yelling after me on the sidewalk claiming I 'stole her money.' I was clearly a tourist and as she punched me in the back of the head, then tried to pull me down by my hair, I started screaming for help. I yelled that I was a tourist, for someone to please help me, that I didn't know this woman, all while she's trying to get around my husband to kill me. Literally, she was crazed, intensely focused on getting to me, yelling that she would kill me. Construction workers nearby didn't step in to help, passersby didn't help. I finally ran terrified into a small restaurant nearby, she chased me in, with husband standing between us, where three off-duty traffic cops called NYPD and forced her outside. She kept trying to come back at me. Four NYPD officers came and while bystanders were videoing with their cellphones instead of helping (!), they took her away. The cops told me that that specific block is very dangerous and that there is a metthodone clinic right next to the coffee shop/book store. I also found an article about this, warning of the dangers here, but only one article. The coffee shop isn't itself bad, but my assault happened in the middle of the day and the cops said tourists should never go to that area. Not to offend what they're trying to do, but I could've lost my life (if it weren't for my husband and then finally, traffic cops being there) and nobody was helping. The cops seemed to suggest this wasn't uncommon there and indeed, the article I read says murder and muggings in this exact area are common. Be...