Giovanni’s Room announced this week that it would shut its doors for good later this month. The LGBT bookstore, which was the oldest of its kind in the nation, provided four decades of information, education and community. Like with the shuttering of other LGBT institutions before it, the community is now left to wonder how the hole can be filled, and what can be done to preserve some vestige of the Giovanni’s Room legacy.
The store was offering LGBT resources in a time when they were most needed — when community members were routinely being arrested, harassed or attacked for their sexual orientation or gender identity. By all accounts, Giovanni’s Room offered a safe space for LGBT people to see reflections of themselves on the shelves, and to find solace and a sense of community with other like-minded folks. In its earliest years, the store offered much more than just titles: It became a gathering spot where LGBT people could feel validated and valued and where they could explore their interests and ideas in an environment that not only didn’t judge them, but actually affirmed them.
Throughout its 40-year history, Giovanni’s Room became different things to different people, and to different generations. As LGBT acceptance blossomed in the past decade, the rainbow-encased store at the corner of 12th and Pine streets was no longer an anomaly, but rather one of a sea of spaces fostering LGBT affirmation in Center City. But, the building welcoming of LGBT people into mainstream communities could be one of several death knells (apart from the burgeoning empires like Amazon) that contributed to Giovanni’s Room decline; as LGBT people are finding themselves reflected more widely, and positively, across all spectrums of mainstream media and in all sectors of society, are industries like LGBT publishing losing relevance?
With all evolutions, being able to both survive and thrive in a continuously changing field requires a careful balance of simultaneously looking backward and forward — remaining committed to original principles while embracing innovations to attract new audiences. The principles upon which Giovanni’s Room was founded are hopefully too strong for the store’s legacy to completely fade. While the store, in its current incarnation, will no longer exist, here’s hoping that its 40 years of fostering community built a strong-enough foundation that its supporters will refuse to let it completely fade.
But for now, hats off to longtime owner Ed Hermance and the number of other early pioneers who gave our community four decades of Giovanni’s Room. Your perseverance, courage and ingenuity touched, shaped and very well may have saved countless lives. Thank you, Giovanni’s Room.