Strange Loop Gallery will be home to the BGSQD’s popup location of a queer bookstore on the Lower East Side.

Last week, we told you about the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, whose goal is to open up a new LGBTQ bookstore and event space in Manhattan. Since then, the BGSQD has succeeded in finding a location to open popup store for the holiday season, at the Strange Loop Gallery on the Lower East Side.

The gallery is curated and designed by Alesia Exum and photographer Claire Fleury, using what they describe as alternative lighting to create a “living environment around the art in each exhibition.” They change the design of the space for every exhibition that comes through the gallery in order to create a unique experience each time. For example, the exhibition that just opened there this weekend, Martyn Thompson’s The New Romantic, features seasonally appropriate autumn leaves scattered on the floor and erotic male figures on the walls.

The BGSQD’s mission in opening up a queer bookstore in the city is to “foster a community invested in the values of mindfulness, intellectual curiosity, justice, compassion, and playfulness. The Bureau seeks to excite and educate a self-confident, sex-positive, and supportive queer community.” Their temporary location at Strange Loop, at 27 Orchard Street, will open on November 15 and remain there through January 31, and they aim to have a permanent store sometime next spring.