Iconic Greenwich Village Bookstore Shuttering Due To Rent Hike

GREENWICH VILLAGE, NY — The iconic Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books in Greenwich Village will close at the end of June due to a rent hike, Jim Drougas, the longtime proprietor, told Patch.

The bookstore at 34 Carmine St. has served the neighborhood for over 30 years.

"I've been having fun all of these years, I'm not despondent," Drougas told Patch. "I'm actually kind of hopeful something is going to turn up, we've had a big impact and a lot of people have been very supportive."

"Even if we have to close, for now, I'm pretty determined to keep it going somewhere, somehow," Drougas said.

Drougas is currently looking for other locations he can move the bookstore into.

He told Patch that those locations vary in how far they are from Lower Manhattan, but he did say "hopefully in the Village."

In terms of looking for help from the community, Drougas said that they might start a fundraiser page once they have a location picked out — so he can show people a particular purpose the funds would be going to.

Drougas also mentioned that he would be open to sharing the new space with another business, something Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books has done over the past decade with Carmine Street Comics.

Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books doesn't just have to be closed by the end of June, but be completely cleared out — meaning it's unclear exactly which day will be its last.

Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books describes itself on its website as an "NYC-based specialty bargain bookstore dealing in highly curated art, fiction, philosophy, spirituality, music and more! Books always below half retail price."

The store is steeped in a very specific type of Lower Manhattan history.

A New York Times article from 2017 breaks down how it was one of the four Manhattan headquarters in 2016 for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign and how it housed the Occupy Wall Street library in 2011.

It is a constant recommendation by the Village Voice.

The Instagram account VanishingNY was one of the first places to share the news that Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books was closing its longtime home.

The devastation in the comment section of the VanishingNY post about the closure was immediate.

"The one really hurts," one person wrote. Another commenter added, "The Last bastion can't go down!"

"This one truly hurts, greed is killing this city," another person wrote in response to the Instagram post.