Walk east about thirty steps. The storefront with the painted faces on the side wall is Bound Together, a volunteer-run anarchist bookstore that has been on this block since May 1, 1983.
The collective started in 1976 at the corner of Hayes and Ashbury under a different model. The founders, including Richard Tetenbaum and Ron Wheeler, each put in fifty dollars and rented a former drugstore. They wanted books that could “remake and transform the urban landscape into a more human place,” focused on poetry, urban survival, social criticism, vegetarianism, holistic health, and small-press titles. In 1983 they moved to 1369 Haight and renamed themselves Bound Together: An Anarchist Collective Bookstore. They’ve been here ever since.
The mural on the east wall is “Anarchists of the Americas” by painter Susan Greene. It includes Emma Goldman, Nicola Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and less-famous figures like Audrey Goodfriend, who co-founded Berkeley’s Walden Center and School. The mural is one of the only pieces of public art on Haight Street that engages directly with the neighborhood’s radical history rather than its musical one.
In the early 1980s the collective founded the Prisoners’ Literature Project, which still sends books to incarcerated people. The store is run by volunteers, some of whom have held shifts for decades. Hours are variable. Call ahead at (415) 431-8355 if you want to go in.