WINBERG: That thrift store side hustle revived Giovanni's Room. And that's stuff that folks in the community just give to us. WINBERG: Then Chelak thought up another addition to the store, one he thought could bring in a lot more revenue - selling secondhand goods.ĬHELAK: You can also get records, CDs, DVDs, vintage clothing, all kinds of weird ephemera from literally all over the world. I think we all believe that no matter who you are or what your background is, you should be able to walk into the store and find a book about a person like you, by a person like you. First, he knew he needed to diversify the bookstore's selection.ĬHELAK: There weren't many titles by trans authors or for trans folks. That's the organization that swooped in, bought the bookstore and made some big changes. Chelak works for the local nonprofit secondhand store Philly AIDS Thrift. He oversaw the reopening in September 2014. WINBERG: That's the current manager of Giovanni's Room, Alan Chelak. And, yeah, the rest is history, as they say. He told reporters he didn't think a new owner could make the store profitable again unless they did something drastically different.ĪLAN CHELAK: Continuing the legacy of the bookstore was really important to us from the very beginning.
By 2014, he'd lost so much money every year that he had to close the shop. The owner blamed the rise of big online bookstores. WINBERG: But within a few decades of opening, the financial outlook for Giovanni's Room was grim. RIAL: It's comfortable, and you feel like you can be out and open and be talking about issues that you can't talk in other places. It helped her find herself and eventually come out. There were feminist readings, muscle magazines and LGBTQ-friendly guides to major cities. There were gay memoirs and lesbian nonfiction works. WINBERG: For Rial, who's 70 now, the bookstore was a haven. Like, they - you know, it's like you look around and make sure that nobody sees you walk in. KELLY RIAL: I think a lot of people who come in, and they talk about when they first came in, have the same kind of reaction. Rial wanted to explore her identity, but she couldn't risk getting caught. It was the '70s, and she hadn't yet come out as trans.
MICHAELA WINBERG, BYLINE: The first time Kelly Rial visited Giovanni's Room, she looked both ways before stepping inside. Michaela Winberg of member station WHYY shares how the bookstore survived and why it's not just a place for books anymore. The one-of-a-kind shop for queer and trans literature was almost lost forever in 2014, when the owner was forced to close because of financial problems.
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