{"id":203525,"date":"2026-04-20T17:22:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T17:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/203525\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T17:22:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T17:22:26","slug":"the-bar-thats-also-an-office-for-or-books-and-lux-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/203525\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bar That\u2019s Also an Office for OR Books and Lux Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n A packed house at the Francis Kite Club for a reading of Search Work, a new release from a publisher who works in the back of the bar.
\n Photo: Adriane Quinlan\n <\/p>\n

On a Wednesday in April, a chalkboard outside the Francis Kite Club on Avenue C read, \u201cFind Your Dream Job!\u201d Inside, on a low stage near the center of the room, in jeans and a loose yellow sweatshirt, Rachel Meade Smith<\/a> was introducing a collection of essays, Search Work<\/a>, as a 21st-century record of the maddening search for \u201cmeaningful, sustainable, and humane work.\u201d Her editor at the small indie OR Books, Olivia Heffernan, pointed out the copies for sale to the audience filling out the bar\u2019s dark-green banquettes and rows of folding chairs, then made an invitation: \u201cFeel free to come check out our office,\u201d she said, pointing to an arched door at the back of the bar.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n The scene at the Francis Kite Club for the release of Search Work.
\n Photo: Adriane Quinlan\n <\/p>\n

For $1,700 per month, OR Books rents the Francis Kite Club<\/a>\u2019s green room from Monday through Wednesday, from about 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. On Thursdays, OR hands it over to Lux<\/a>, a feminist magazine, which pays $250 for the day. Bartenders arrive at 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, creating a built-in happy hour for the assembled workers. The bar-office also hosts events like the Search Work launch along with fundraisers and parties \u2014\u00a0a perk that makes use of a sound system brought in by Kyp Malone, who\u2019s part of the\u00a0collective of artsy friends who co-own the bar. Chelsea Manning has DJ\u2019d a party for Lux. Slavoj \u017di\u017eek and Norman Finkelstein have appeared for OR Books. The relationship is \u201csymbiotic,\u201d per Joey Daniel, who handles audiobooks for OR. \u201cI\u2019ve signed off on beer deliveries,\u201d says Lux founder and editor-in-chief Sarah Leonard. \u201cAnd sometimes we get books delivered on a Saturday, and they\u2019re here to receive it for us,\u201d adds Heffernan. Editors dump out half-drunk cocktails and tidy up so they can spread out over the banquettes in front with their laptops and manuscripts. Bartenders borrow books. \u201cIt\u2019s like a sitcom back here, and always delightful,\u201d says Leonard.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n Sean Goldring, the bar manager, chats with Colin Robinson, the co-founder of OR Books, and Joey Daniel, who oversees audiobooks and multimedia.
\n Photo: Adriane Quinlan\n <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in a bar, but it doesn\u2019t cross my mind,\u201d says Daniel, who later accepts a free white wine from Sean Goldring, the bar manager. The real benefit is not the bar itself but rather the feeling of the room: casual, grubby, a place for play and for the play of ideas. Smith, whose book was launching that night, remembered back to her first meeting in the room: how she had wanted OR to publish her book, how she had been nervous before arriving, and how almost immediately she had felt like \u201cwe were just peers having a real conversation,\u201d she says. \u201cI didn\u2019t have to impress them.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n Through the arched door, editor Sam Russek works below a drum kit and a shelf of back issues of Lux Magazine. From left: Photo: Adriane QuinlanPhoto: Adriane Quinlan\n <\/p>\n

\n Through the arched door, editor Sam Russek works below a drum kit and a shelf of back issues of Lux Magazine. From top: Photo: Adriane QuinlanPhoto: A… more
\n Through the arched door, editor Sam Russek works below a drum kit and a shelf of back issues of Lux Magazine. From top: Photo: Adriane QuinlanPhoto: Adriane Quinlan\n <\/p>\n

This is, of course, exactly the kind of thing that Colin Robinson, who runs OR Books, wants to hear about his operation \u2014\u00a0a small publisher that prints on demand to reduce waste and backs authors no one else will touch. (One of last year\u2019s best sellers was a collection<\/a> from the late Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer.) But if you ask Robinson how he ended up here, the story is purely financial: When their last landlord died,<\/a> they needed a new gathering space, plus a place to host events, and he knew one of the owners of Francis Kite Club. \u201cIt\u2019s just brutal economics,\u201d he tells me. Office space is expensive, and the publishing industry has been downsizing for decades now, sometimes cutting staff, sometimes pushing workers to go hybrid. (Scholastic<\/a> and Oxford University Press recently sold off<\/a> iconic New York buildings, Macmillan left the Flatiron and consolidated<\/a>, and Penguin Random House sublet<\/a> 112,000 square feet at its headquarters.)<\/p>\n

The time-share model also made sense in another way: Small magazines regularly throw events at their offices, effectively turning them into a bar for the night. (N+1 has had parties in an industrial Greenpoint loft<\/a> with a balcony off a hallway for smokers; the Baffler has hosted<\/a> in its more formal Manhattan office.) So why not, if you\u2019re an exceedingly small magazine like Lux, have the office be the bar? Events they\u2019ve thrown here have been key to helping build a subscription base. \u201cThe reason you\u2019re reading Lux is to be in community with people<\/a>, and the space does allow for that in a very powerful way,\u201d says Leonard. (The perk of a bar in an office is so obvious that even JPMorgan is doing it.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n Smith (left) reads as Heffernan, her editor, makes an adjustment on a laptop.
\n Photo: Adriane Quinlan\n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n The audience for the Search Work reading took over green banquettes, backed by paintings by Nina Nichols.
\n Photo: Adriane Quinlan\n <\/p>\n

And many bars are having just as hard a time making rent, making these kinds of arrangements a life raft for basically all parties involved. A start-up called Fluxo<\/a> got off the ground in the city last year as a kind of Resy for hot desks at a place with a guaranteed level of Wi-Fi and free nonalcoholic drinks. A spot in Bushwick has free seltzer and stays open until 11 p.m. The most popular bar, says Matthew Kennedy of Fluxo, is off Grand Central.<\/a> And owners have found, he adds, that workers who come for the free coffee sometimes stay to end the day with a beer.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s a drawback to the arrangement at the Francis Kite Club, it\u2019s the fact that the office OR Books walks into on Monday morning has spent the weekend as a greenroom for traveling bands and performance artists, actors and poets. \u201cWe find lots of clothes,\u201d says Daniel, holding a sweatshirt he picked up that morning. Robinson and Heffernan have cleaned up pantyhose. \u201cWe found video and photo evidence that was crazier than we could have imagined,\u201d Robinson says. But his deeper worries so far haven\u2019t come to pass \u2014\u00a0no one steals the books that stretch on shelves up to the ceiling, representing 17 years of work. People are leaving books behind, almost as if they want them to be noticed. \u201cWhich in a way is even worse because we have too much in here,\u201d he says, looking around at a stuffed-to-the-brim room \u2014 with merch over a fridge, a coffee counter over a filing cabinet of author contracts, and sound equipment spilling out of storage capped with a silver drum kit.<\/p>\n

After the reading for Search Work, visitors wander in: an archivist at the Schomburg Center, a bartender who needed to put ice in the fridge, and the writers who had just read on the stage grabbing their bags for the long ride home. \u201cYou probably weren\u2019t expecting anything as lavish and glossy as this,\u201d Robinson says with a laugh. A little later on, someone walks in, perhaps seeing the chalkboard (\u201cFind Your Dream Job!\u201d). Could Robinson print their r\u00e9sum\u00e9 ahead of an interview? \u201cFluent in Japanese,\u201d he says, reading the file as it prints. \u201cYou\u2019re overqualified.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n

A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n

Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n

By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Notice<\/a> and to receive email correspondence from us.<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A packed house at the Francis Kite Club for a reading of Search Work, a new release from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[2878,98,100,99,1489,1208,9,24,63,80539,1491,9861,80540,80538,80541],"class_list":{"0":"post-203525","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-brooklyn","10":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","11":"tag-brooklyn-news","12":"tag-commercial-real-estate","13":"tag-media","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-publishing","18":"tag-real-estate","19":"tag-remote-work","20":"tag-the-office","21":"tag-what-was-the-office","22":"tag-working-arrangements"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}