Store owner Kim Brinster says it’s incidents like that one that keep the endangered species of gay indie bookstores from completely dying out (though two, A Different Light and Creative Visions, have closed within the past six years, leaving only Oscar Wilde). “In a weird way, I almost feel like the desire for them is coming back,” says Brinster, who managed the shop for more than a decade before buying it from the previous owner just over a year ago. “There are so many more gay books than there were when the store first opened,” she says, adding that people still look toward the bookstore for support in coming out and for community, just as they did years ago.

The shop’s strong roots are courtesy of the late Craig Rodwell, a gay activist who founded Oscar Wilde on Mercer Street in 1967. At the time, explains Brinster, “the term ‘gay bookstore’ didn’t mean literature, it meant porn.” But Rodwell didn’t carry skin mags, stocking instead a few shelves of works by authors that most likely included James Baldwin and Ann Bannon. It became a communal gathering place—legend has it that the first Gay Pride March was organized within its lively space—and Rodwell soon moved it to its current location, a block from the Stonewall Bar in a brick townhouse on Christopher Street.

Rodwell sold the shop to a manager shortly before he died in 1994, and from there it changed hands at least once more with owner Larry Lingle. Brinster, who had been a letter carrier in the neighborhood, came on as manager in the early ’90s and helped to gut and renovate the place, adding new bookcases and track lighting (but preserving the elegant marble and brick fireplaces that peek out from behind some of the shelves).

By 2003, Lingle said he had lost too much money to keep the business going, and that’s when Washington, D.C.’s Deacon Maccubbin—whose own Lambda Rising was inspired by the Oscar Wilde shop—stepped in to take over. But he lasted only until early 2006, when, coincidentally, Brinster received an inheritance and used the funds to buy the shop she’d grown to love. “I think at that time I realized there was no other place I’d ever want to work in my life,” she says.

And while running the institution has not been easy—chain stores and websites continue to draw away business, which has, incidentally, remained about 80 percent male despite the dyke ownership—there are plenty of grateful fans.

“It’s gone from kind of a little dark bookstore with things all over the place and management that didn’t keep up, to a very nice, very modern shop,” says Ron Hanby, the LGBT-store liaison for Bookazine, a New Jersey–based wholesale distributor. “Kim is a pioneer, and God bless her for stepping in and buying it.” Hanby, who works with about 100 gay bookstores across the country, dreads the possibility of Oscar Wilde not surviving.

“Being the first bookstore and next to the Stonewall, it’s been part of our liberation from the start,” he says. “Plus, I’m old-school. I’m almost 60 years old and I just believe in supporting gay and lesbian stores. The younger generations are not used to it—they can find anything anywhere. The older ones know what it was like to try to find gay books, even ten years ago, and not be able to.”

Marcy Pierchalski, a regular in the shop since 1969, is one such customer. A longtime New Jersey resident who now lives in Queens, Pierchalski has come into the shop weekly all these years; now housebound because of an injury, she still orders her books—mainly mysteries—over the phone from Oscar Wilde. “I like to give it my business over the big chains,” she says. “It’s brought me a lot of happiness, and it’s been like a home away from home.”

Oscar Wilde Bookshop (15 Christopher St between Greenwich Ave and Waverly Pl; 212-255-8097, oscarwildebooks.com) is open daily 11am–7pm.