Bookstore Bathrooms

A drawing of a bear using a toilet in the woods.
Bears have it better than bookstore patrons. Art by SpacePenguinStudios.

Many bookstores present themselves as community spaces. But are they? One test is:

Do they let people use their bathrooms?

Excuse my bluntness, but expelling waste is a human necessity. We invented bathrooms and modern plumbing to provide a private and sanitary way to meet that need. And yet, in America, bathrooms that were previously public are increasingly being locked off.

Make no mistake, locking a bathroom doesn’t make the piss and shit not happen: it just makes it a lot more visible (and smellable) in the few public spaces we have left. Beyond the immediate unplesantness, this can have larger public health impacts 1 such as the spread of diseases (e.g. Shigella and Hep A).

When you gotta go, you gotta go, and it’s in everybody’s best interests that people go in bathrooms, and not in the street.

An old painting of a woman throwing a chamberpot full of excrement out the window on top of some angry pedestrians.
When we don’t have a pot to piss in.

Which brings me to bookshops! I’ve been to many bookstores throughout my life. Many of them present themselves as community spaces: places to gather, talk about books, maybe read a few pages before deciding whether or not to buy one. It’s common for bookstores to have cafes or coffee shops attached, further increasing the “third place”-ness of the store.

To be clear, they’re not libraries: they’re not explicitly public spaces. But bookstore owners often try to create such an environment and advertise their store as such. It’s pleasant, and, I assume, leads to more book sales.

And yet, in my annecdotal tour of cities across the country, bookstores are increasingly closing their bathrooms to the public. Many I stopped at said they’ve had them closed since the COVID lockdowns.

There’s nuance to this. I’m sympathetic to the fact that bookstore employees shouldn’t need to deal with people trashing the bathroom, or, god forbid, people overdosing in it. And that if they are going to deal with it, they should be getting paid better, and be getting support around it.

But these aren’t new problems. People sometimes trash bathrooms, but that didn’t stop bookstores from having public bathrooms five years ago. And there are processes that can help with drug use in bathrooms: checking on people after 10 mins, keeping Narcan on hand, etc.

Small businesses shouldn’t have to pick up the slack where our society at large has failed. We, in the Western world, have failed to provide people with the infrastructure and shelter required to live safe and dignified lives. It’s not a bookshop’s job to bear that burden alone.

But can a store really call itself a community space if it doesn’t provide the basic infrastructure required for humans to gather sanitarily?

They have colorful art made by the local schoolchildren on the walls and lists of community events they’re hosting.

They’ve got a whole section on disability justice and a front-of-the-store display of queer authors.

And then they don’t let you use the goddamn bathroom. They refuse basic accomodations to, say, people with IBS, or people who need to change a tampon, or people who just drank a lot of water before coming.

“We care,” they say! But also: “give us your money and get the fuck out!”

Particularly sad for me is the state of things in Boulder, CO – a town where I lived for ten years.

Boulder Bookstore is one of the last long-standing stores on Pearl St, the commercial part of town that’s gotten increasingly bougie and expensive over the years.

I visited a few weeks ago and after browsing books for a while, I asked to use their bathrooms. I’d used them plenty of times in the past, but this time, they told me they were closed to the public since the COVID lockdowns. The employee I was talking to seemed surprised I’d even asked.

The store has served as a rare community space, hosting book clubs and author talks for decades.

Good luck to those talk attendees – hope you didn’t drink too much water before the two hour event 🙄.

Even worse is the public library in Boulder.

The library was fully closed from December to April of 2023, in response to “elevated levels of methamphetamine” found within the building. Two library workers reported feeling symptoms – but were later cleared of any actual exposure.

After April 2023, they re-opened – but with security guards with guns guarding the bathroom entrance. I visited in April 2024, a year later, and was subjected to a full TSA style experience.

I was stopped at the entrance by a man in tactical gear, and told to leave my bag in a box. He then told me I could use any stall I wanted, but that I could only use it for a limited time. After I’d finished, I then had to wait for the other guard to check somebody else in before I could get my bag and leave.

All in all it was a very uncomfortable experience for me, a wealthy, non-disabled, cisgender, white man. God forbid I had a colostomy bag or some other medical condition that I didn’t want to disclose. And then forget about it if I was homeless or otherwise “sketchy looking.”

In addition to bathroom experience, the public seating area has been turned into a panopticon. The library used to have these cozy little reading nooks nestled amongst the stacks. They’ve since removed many of these, and created a sterile open area where security guards can keep an eye on you. A perfect place for reading!

When libraries are one of the last public spaces we have in a lot of towns, this prisonification is unacceptable. And just so goddamn sad. I spent a lot of time in libraries as a kid, but can’t imagine what kids feel in them now. Though hell, maybe this is their normal.

This post has turned into a bit of a rant, hasn’t it? I’m frustrated. I love bookstores and libraries. I’ve been reading since before I can remember, and books and the places that provide them have always been a refuge.

And now so many of them feel like a slap in the face.

To end on a good note though, there are definitely bookstores around the country that are doing it right, such as:

These stores all have publically accessible bathrooms that you don’t need to buy anything to use. It’s my hope that more stores can follow their example and that we as a society can treat one another with dignity.

I’ve been volunteering at Bindlestiff, so if you’re in the area maybe you can find me there!

Thanks for reading.

  1. As a side note, I learned while researching this that the widespread rumor that homeless encampments are causing water contamination seems to not be true, based on a study done at an encampment in San Diego and testing done in the Boulder Creek.↩︎