Brave Books, located at 1307 Arizona Avenue in El Paso, recently announced it would temporarily close for roughly the next three months. After issuing the business a notice of violation, city officials told KTSM the incident was prompted by a complaint.
In an Instagram post, the bookstore—which has more than 15,000 followers—said it was working with the city’s zoning department to change the property’s classification to commercial. Until then, the store said it is not permitted to operate as a walk-in bookshop.
“We are confident that the city and its zoning department are committed to working with us to continue to provide a vitally important quality-of-life service to the El Paso community,” the post read.
In the meantime, the bookstore is still operating through online sales and social media. Brave Books is posting photos of available titles, customers can pay digitally and the company will deliver to your doorstep.
“Help us get the word out,” the store captioned the post. “Brave Books of El Paso is here for the long haul.”
In a video posted Friday, bookstore co-owner Jud Burgess said the response from the community has been “overwhelming,” adding that the business has a track record of being a “great community space” that “El Paso desperately needs.”
“We felt your love, support and solidarity when I let y’all know that we’re gonna have to close down for a little while,” Burgess said. “There’s always that hope that the city is gonna kind of cut us some slack a little and let us continue operating our business as we have here…for seven-and-a-half years.”
Burgess said Brave Books fills a gap in El Paso’s book scene.
“As far as larger independent bookstores with a huge amount of books, it’s not here right now,” Burgess said. “We believe fully that the city is going to be very cooperative with us and work with us so that we can get…back here so that people can walk into our special space.”
The bookshop has served visitors from El Paso and out of state, and Burgess said he hopes to reopen for in-person business soon. Yesterday, he shared a video of himself setting out on his first delivery of the week since the zoning shutdown and said he had several digital buyers.
“We’re grateful to everybody and we can’t wait to see your smiling faces again, but in the meantime support us by buying online,” Burgess said. “Thank you so much guys, we love you, we’ll see you soon.”