50 Years of Collective Solidarity
The Wooden Shoe
The Wooden Shoe collective invites you to celebrate our 50th year serving the Philadelphia community and proving that a better world is possible by living our vision through the work we do every day. We are an all volunteer anarchist feminist bookstore, infoshop and radical community space where people can read books, meet and learn from one another, get a drink of water and use a clean restroom all for free (a public toilet and no bosses, truly we are of some strange counterculture). Join us October 17th (rain date 24th) to kick off the festivities with a block party in front of our South Street location and come learn about the history of the Shoe!
A makeshift museum of memorabilia, artifacts and anecdotes from half a century of community, activism and this labor of love shared by so many friends and colleagues will be on display for your pleasure! In addition to the party on the 17th, we shall offer our regular monthly programming of free indoor events which include art and craft workshops, poetry and book author appearances, first aid and de-escalation training workshops plus many more (check out our event list at woodenshoebooks.org for dates and info)!
About The Wooden Shoe
In 1976, a wonderful group of people with a beautiful vision of a better world opened an anti-profit, all-volunteer, anarchist, collectively-run bookstore in Philadelphia. The totally crazy thing? 2026 is our 50th Anniversary! And we’re still going strong! In a time when bookstores seem to be an endangered species, we are still freely giving our time to help to keep radical books (and pamphlets and zines and comix and shirts and badges and posters and other excellent things) available to the public. See, we’re also an infoshop, meaning that we serve as a space for people to gather, learn, and find out more about like-minded activities happening in their communities. We don’t do it for money—we do it because we believe that a better world is possible, and that the only way to bring it about is to spread the ideas that will help us to get there.
Working within a system we oppose, we seek to embody that better world in microcosm: in other words, we want to demonstrate that sh*t can function without coercion, exploitation, or authority. No one owns the Wooden Shoe. There are no bosses, managers, or employees. Though we are also (irony alert) a US Government certified 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, we make all decisions through consensus rather than majority-rule voting, so as to empower those involved. When telemarketers call and ask to speak to the owner, we get to say “There is no owner; we’re a collective,” and then they usually get confused and mumble something and hang up. Fun!