Community Bookstore Owner Stephanie Valdez Reveals Her Not-So-Guilty Guilty Pleasure
And you can try it at Un Posto Italiano in the heart of Park Slope. She also talks about her dream for Community Bookstore — plus a whole lot more!
Hi! I'm excited to welcome you to Park Slope Times, a weekly newsletter featuring fun interviews, great recommendations, and life advice from Park Slopers. I’m Kelley MacDonald, a writer and editor living in Park Slope. Thanks so much for being here.
Hi! Happy New Year and welcome to Park Slope Times, my new weekly newsletter for people who live in and love Park Slope. This is the inaugural dispatch, and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to take up a bit of precious space in your inbox. I promise it’ll be worth it. The interviews coming up are so fun — from a pasta-loving restaurateur to a mini-crochet-obsessed celebrity hairstylist to a Snapstreaking children’s musician. First up is Community Bookstore owner Stephanie Valdez!
Stephanie has her finger on the pulse of Park Slope — which is what I’m hoping to achieve with Park Slope Times — so I was thrilled to catch up with her recently. She reveals her dream for Community Bookstore, her biggest challenge running small businesses, and her thoughts on book bans. Plus, she shares 14 things she loves, including her favorite Park Slope take-out and an unforgettable experiential gift.
Kelley MacDonald: Before we get to the questions, I have to tell you that when I’ve told people about this newsletter everyone has said — you have to do Community Bookstore! Of course, you were on my list already, but I thought hearing that from so many people was sweet.
Stephanie Valdez: Aww, thank you. As one of the older remaining stores, it's nice to know we still make the list. I think the people you interview will be excited to rep their favorites in the neighborhood.
Okay, first off, Community Bookstore has a very loyal customer base here in Park Slope. How do you feel the local support has shaped the Bookstore’s identity?
The store opened in 1971, and it’s gone through several rocky periods. And I think the store wouldn’t have navigated out of those difficult periods if it weren’t for that local support. I think on a practical, concrete level, we respond really carefully to what people are asking for and order. On a week-to-week basis, when people order something that we think other people might want or when people come in and say all the kids in my kid’s class are reading a certain book, we respond to that and usually order that book or pay more attention to those titles. We try to make sure the shelves reflect, to a certain degree, what our audience is interested in.
We’re always in dialogue with our customers, always talking to them about what they read. What a certain book reminded them of. I think that dialogue is really important for a bookstore.
You’ve ordered three or four books for us, and I always appreciate your willingness to look for different titles and have them shipped to the store.
Of course, we’re small so we’ve always depended on doing special orders. I think other stores, since the pandemic, have made that more of a focus. But it’s always been part of our DNA.
What responsibilities do you feel as the owner of a bookstore to amplify voices, especially with book bans surging and with targeted efforts to censor specific voices, particularly those of LGBTQ, Black, and Indigenous people?
I think Park Slope is a bit of a bubble, where we don't have to have a lot of challenging discussions about what we're carrying or why. So I'll give that caveat. I think our work isn’t quite as challenging as other bookstores in different parts of the country. People come in to specifically buy books that have been banned elsewhere. And I know that we have an enormous amount of privilege selling books here, in a place where people are not actively looking to censor books. That being said, we try to keep an open mind. It would be impossible for me to agree with every title that we have on the shelves, and we're often willing to special order things that we don't agree with. We try to display a diverse amount of voices often that are marginalized or not getting recognized elsewhere.
There are times when the display window feels like a barometer of how the neighborhood is thinking and feeling about current events and topics. Do you pick the books that are displayed? How do you pick which ones to include?
I don’t know if I should fess up to this [laughs]. Yes, I am often behind the curtain picking the books. Every Tuesday, we get an influx of new releases, and we look at them and think about what’s interesting to us, and what would be interesting to our neighbors. Between September and December, it becomes pretty difficult to decide what gets a spot in the window because there are so many titles. We’re always trying to balance a mix of small publishers, larger publishers, local authors, books in translation. It’s a bit of a puzzle.
What’s the hardest part about running a bookstore?
The economic pressures that small stores are under — never mind bookstores — that has to be the biggest challenge. Beyond that, books are complicated because, unlike a shoe store where someone could come in and ask for last season’s shoes, people come to us with questions about any book ever published. We have to access an immense amount of knowledge to answer questions every day, and our customers ask us really interesting questions, sometimes difficult questions. We often get into more esoteric searches. I think that’s part of what makes the work fun and ever-changing, but it does make bookselling complex.
In 2022, your co-owner of 13 years, Ezra Goldstein, retired. What was it like for you to take over ownership of two bookstores?
In some ways, it wasn't all that different, because I've been doing this work for a long time. We had a transition plan and great staff that took over a large chunk of Ezra’s work. But running a business since 2020 hasn't been the most, let's say, fun or carefree era. I think if the transition had come at a different time I might have made more changes or done things differently. But because of the timing, I think my job has been to just keep a steady hand and not do anything too wild and crazy. I have two stores and a small child, and personally, this year I have been stretched pretty thin. It has been challenging, but I have hopes of correcting that for next year.
I feel like collectively we've all been in survival mode for years. Maybe in 2024, we’ll have a little more brain space to pull ourselves out of that mode.
That's the thing. Like last year, we did a very technical, very time-consuming thing. We changed our point of sale system, and it changed everything we were doing operationally and also changed our website. But in the next few years, I hope to do some more fun things like spend more time making the garden feel like a welcoming space or re-tuning our kids’ section to make it feel more cozy.
What’s your long-term dream for Community Bookstore?
Long term, my goal — my dream — for the bookstore has always been longevity. We took over the store just before its 40th birthday when it didn't seem certain it would make it to 50. And now, I think we're in a largely more stable place where I can see a future beyond 50. My dream has been to create a stable platform for the bookstore to reach those milestones.
Neighborhood shops: SV: I love Slope Home, definitely a go-to spot and a place I just personally really enjoy going into. And I often run into Kiwi and Fig on the next block. KM: They always have the best window displays. SV: Always beautiful.
Guilty pleasure (but not): Well, I mean the ultimate is gelato from Un Posto Italiano — in the garden — in season. That's the height. It's so great. I'm not sure I can even feel guilty about it.
Book: A number of years ago, every single person working at Community Bookstore at the time loved “Milkman” by Anna Burns. It wasn't just the experience of loving the book. It was the experience of loving the book communally. That was really special.
Author events: Kate Manne is coming to talk about her book “Unshrinking,” which is about facing fatphobia, and an author named Linneaa Axelsson who's the winner of Sweden's most prestigious literary award. She's from an indigenous Sámi community. I’m excited for that as well. [Ed. note: See Events section below for details.]
Way to feel put together: I’m definitely not ready for the day unless I’ve had a cup of PG Tips with milk. That’s my morning thing. I recently bought a very beautiful coat, second-hand. It sort of doesn’t matter what I’m wearing [under], it makes me feel put together. But I really like a uniform. This time of year I like some type of sweater and black pants. I recently bought a wool blazer at an incredible little shop in Windsor Terrace called Pushcart Vintage.
Little luxuries: I love something called Everyday Oil that they have over at Blok Hill that has a very herbal scent. Also, [the Aesop team on 5th Ave] dropped off a sample pump bottle of soap and hand sanitizer, which as you can imagine, we go through a lot of. So for a couple of months, we had this incredible experience of getting to use that at the Bookstore. It was a really beautiful neighborly gift.
Take-out: My go-to places are East Wind Snack Shop in Windsor Terrace and Kos Kaffe on 5th Avenue.
Outdoor dining: The Double Windsor and Krupa Grocery are two places that bring me an immense amount of joy on a regular basis. Krupa has a garden, and especially in the pandemic to be able to eat outside, even in the depths of winter. I remember I made my poor friend eat with me in January on a 20-degree day outside.
Unpopular opinion: SV: Well, I love winter. Is that unpopular enough [laughs]? KM: Me too! I love the snow. I grew up in Vermont. So I'm always like, when is it going to snow in Brooklyn?! Everyone's like, no, we don't want it. SV: I've promised my son that this year if snow doesn't find us, we will find snow.
Experiential gift: Friends of mine once made me a New York City scavenger hunt. It was very lavish. We didn’t even get to the end because we got too tired [laughs]. They walked me around Brooklyn Heights while blindfolded. I didn’t know I was in Brooklyn Heights. They walked me to the Promenade, and when I took off my blindfold it was dusk. They had a tray of cupcakes with candles. They started singing Happy Birthday and then everyone on the Promenade started singing. That was a pretty unique experience.
Gift for kids: Who doesn’t like a stack of graphic novels? I also often run across the street to Little Things Toy Store, a kind of neighborhood landmark.
Gift for staff: I love giving people socks. I usually buy socks for the staff that works Christmas Eve. I try to buy well-made socks that are a bit of a splurge.
Book-buying tip: We really enjoy people who are open to our suggestions, because sometimes it’s really fun to make the connection between what they’re describing about the recipient and a book we read or a book that’s a bit more obscure. It’s exciting to pluck that book off the shelf and say, “This is exactly the book you’re describing.”
Places in the world: Paris and New Mexico. I partially grew up in Mexico and Puerto Rico, and I'm half Latinx. I grew up in a Spanish-speaking household. A lot of my family lives in Latin America.
Thank you so much, Stephanie! We adore Community Bookstore!
(Photo layout by Kelley MacDonald; Photo by John Kilbane. Shrimp photo by Alan Battman for “Damn Good Chinese Food” cookbook. Affogato photo by Un Posto Italiano; Snowy brownstones by CB. Promenade by Myrna Suarez. Book-buying photo tip by CB; New Mexico photo by Raychel Sanner. All other images are courtesy of Stephanie Valdez or product photos.)
Park Slope bar Winemak’Her terrace destroyed during Tuesday’s storm: Owner Alexandra Charpentier shared the damage on social media and is asking for donations to help clean up the area and rebuild the structure.
9 Park Slope restaurants participating in NYC Restaurant Week: This year, 62 restaurants in Brooklyn, including nine in Park Slope, are participating in the winter event that kicks off Jan 16 and runs through Feb 4.
Brooklyn Museum to feature artworks from the personal collection of Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz: From Feb 10 through July 7, “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” will be on view, featuring more than 100 pieces from world-renowned multigenerational Black diasporic artists, including Gordon Parks, Kehinde Wiley, Esther Mahlangu, Nina Chanel Abney, Barkley L. Hendricks, and Lorna Simpson.
01/13 "STREET / ART Brooklyn" Gowanus Art Walk, 11:30AM 📍The Roof, Whole Foods
01/13 Free Live Music - Chris and The Automat Music, 5PM-8PM 📍Winemak'Her
01/13 Brooklyn Qawwali Party, 10PM-11:55PM 📍Barbès
01/14 Down to Earth Farmers Market, 9AM-2PM 📍Washington Park
01/14 Dustin Nickerson: Halfway There Tour, 5:30PM-7PM 📍Union Hall
01/14 Wine Class on Intro to master tasting, 7:30PM-8:30PM 📍Winemak'Her
01/16 Drag Bingo, 8PM-11PM 📍Rullo’s
01/17 We Have Fun: A Free Weekly Comedy Show, 7:30PM 📍Young Ethel’s
01/19 Family Movie Night: The Super Mario Bros. Movie, 3:30PM-5:30PM 📍Park Slope Library
01/20 Free Jazz Live with TAMBOUR, 7:30PM 📍Winemak'Her
01/21 Steve Martin Presents, 5PM-6:30PM 📍Union Hall
01/22 Gathering Wool: knit and crochet, 11AM-12PM📍Park Slope Library
01/22 Jack & Friends Presents: Lucy Kalantari | Registration required 24 hrs in advance, 1PM-1:45PM📍Park Slope Library
01/25 French Night | Mussels party & "La Vie en Rose" viewing, 7:30PM 📍Winemak'Her
01/26 Kate Manne presents UNSHRINKING with Virginia Sole-Smith, 7PM-8PM 📍Community Bookstore
01/28 Joke-e-oke: Standup Comedy Karaoke | Hosted by Harmon Leon (This American Life, New Yorker), 5PM-6PM 📍Young Ethel’s
01/29 Linnea Axelsson presents AEDNAN, 7PM-8PM 📍Community Bookstore
Thank you for being here! I already love this newsletter so much, and I hope you stick around on this journey with me. Please let me know if there are people you want to hear from or if there’s a Park Slope story you’d like me to cover. Thanks again, and have a good weekend!
Kelley xoxo