[URBAN NOTE] On the impending move of Glad Day Bookshop to Church Street

[rfmcdonald]

News of the Glad Day Bookshop's impending move to Church Street has spread widely, to Canada's Quill & Quire and to international sites like Gay Star News and New Now Next. I first learned of this from Daily Xtra.

Glad Day Bookshop is moving from a cramped, albeit charming, second-floor on Yonge Street to a massive ground-floor in Toronto’s Church-Wellesley Village — the space currently occupied by Byzantium, a martini bar and restaurant.

“The location and facility we’ve secured is what’s currently known as Byzantium, at 499 Church St,” says Michael Erickson, one of the owners of Glad Day, the world’s oldest LGBTQ bookstore. “We’re taking over the space, the lease, the liquor licenses, the equipment.”

“Byzantium in its current form is closing.”

At 250 square metres, the new location is more than three times larger than the current Yonge space. It also boasts a back patio, bar, large storage area downstairs and is wheelchair accessible. Erickson plans to install a wheelchair-accessible washroom as well.

The owners hope the larger, more versatile venue will allow them to incorporate several new revenue streams. “We’ll be re-opening as a bookstore-coffee shop-cocktail bar,” Erickson says. The current plan is to have the business operate as a coffee shop and bookstore during the day, and a bar and performance space at night. It may even become a boardgame café a few days a week.

People can donate to the bookstore to finance the move here.

This is big. I sincerely hope it works out--I think it can, but still, I need to hope. I think it not inaccurate to say that not only the future of Glad Day, but the future of Church Street as a gay area, depends on this working out.