In January, the independent bookstore Westsider Rare & Used Books announced it would be closing after 35 years on the Upper West Side. Owners said they couldn’t keep the Westsider Books open amid slumping sales.
“We just can’t make it anymore,” Dorian Thornley, 50, who started working at the shop in 1995 and became a co-owner in 2002, said with a sigh. “It’s the end of an era.”
But then…
There was an immediate outpouring of support from locals and longtime customers, and owner Dorian Thornley noted that if they could crowdfund $50K, he would keep it open. And last week, the GoFundMe effort passed that mark, ensuring that the bookstore will live to sell more used books another day.
Westsider Books: Last used bookstore on the Upper West Side?
Every corner of the store is packed to the rafters with interesting finds in different genres of music and literature. In a world that is quickly becoming digital, Westsider prides itself on selling records, VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs, sheet music, postcards, and countless paperbacks.
Westsider’s adherence to older practices also means that customers can make trades and sell used books though mainly at the Broadway location.
Dorian Thornley and Bryan Gonzalez, the owners, believe that they may sadly be the last used bookstore on the Upper West Side. Bibliophiles keep Westsider Books open for business in a changing retail climate Westsider Books has the musty smell and sense of disarray that a used book store should have.
Westsider Books began as a wheelbarrow full of used books for sale, later moving to a tiny storefront on Broadway between 80th and 81st streets. Thornley was originally an employee at the store, then known as Gryphon Books, and he eventually bought it with his business partner, Bryan Gonzalez, in 2002.
But today, their store is such an anomaly that Woody Allen chose Westsider Books as a setting for his newest movie, Fading Gigolo. When not being used as a movie set, the store is filled with bibliophiles, some of whom come in twice a day. What really keeps the bookstore running though is the location: on a main thoroughfare and right near the 79th Street subway stop. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that the Barnes & Noble across the street closed a couple of years ago.