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How a Harry Styles pop-up in the East Village led to a nearby bookstore owner's arrest
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Sonia Rao
Published Sep 22, 2026
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Sonia Rao for Gothamist
By
Sonia Rao
Published Sep 22, 2026
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A sign on the building hosting the Harry Styles pop-up shop reads, “Together, Together.”
The temporary merchandise store opened in the East Village in late August and will stick around through Nov. 1, a weekslong period coinciding with Styles’ 30-show residency at Madison Square Garden. Many of the English pop singer’s eager fans are more than willing to wait for hours (yes, actual hours) in a line that snakes down East Second Street to purchase his colorful shirts, tote bags and baseball caps.
They’re thrilled to be there. But to certain locals, “Together, Together” is a cruel joke.
Bonnie Slotnick, 72, who runs her namesake cookbook store a few doors down from the pop-up, was arrested last week following an altercation with a member of the pop-up’s production team. Slotnick was charged with four counts, including harassment, possession of a weapon and “menacing” in the second and third degrees.
Slotnick told the neighborhood blog EV Grieve that she'd been upset for weeks by the masses of people congregating in front of her business. In an email to Gothamist on Tuesday morning, she added, “I don’t think the people standing in line, who are mostly from elsewhere, have any idea of the disruption they’re causing.”
When asked for comment, Styles' team did not respond.
Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks has been around for nearly 30 years. It's now located on a relatively quiet block in the East Village, where it moved to around a decade ago. The neighborhood has changed, with venues like Mars Bar long ago shutting down and being replaced by major chains. But the area directly around this block of East Second Street, which stretches between Bowery and Second Avenue, has been able to sustain a number of independent businesses and a variety of housing situations, from a halfway house and accommodations for homeless people to upper middle-class apartments and an NYU dormitory.
Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, with the pop-up in the background
Sonia Rao for Gothamist
The long lines accompanying the Styles pop-up is a glaring reminder of the neighborhood's ongoing gentrification.
As was first reported by EV Grieve, Slotnick got into a verbal argument on Friday with a production team member she said was standing in front of the cookbook store’s basement entrance, where Slotnick normally locks her bike. The woman allegedly refused to move after Slotnick asked a couple times and, per the store owner, “the name-calling started.” Slotnick turned around from securing her bike with a Kryptonite lock and, holding the key between her fingers, said she “shoved” it toward the woman, who asked her colleagues to call the police. Slotnick said she spent about 12 hours in custody between the 9th Precinct, Manhattan Central Booking and a brief visit to Bellevue Hospital.
“The line has wreaked havoc on my mental state,” Slotnick wrote in her Tuesday email to Gothamist. “I dread coming to work on the days that the pop-up is open, which is five days a week.”
The pop-up is located at 22 East Second St., a building resembling a two-bay garage that is owned by 77-year-old actor and filmmaker Willard Morgan. Morgan told Gothamist on Tuesday that his uncle built the place in 1955 to house a glazing business, and it has been in the family ever since. Morgan took over operations in 2004 and has rented the space out for all sorts of events, including performances, fundraisers and pop-ups.
“Cynthia Nixon’s campaign held a fundraiser there,” he said. “Debbie Harry had a fundraiser for her music education fund. It’s been an active community structure since the beginning.”
Morgan has rented the space to corporations, such as the makeup brands Maybelline and MAC Cosmetics, “to cover the huge taxes that we pay on the buildings.” (He and his brother also own a property on East Eighth Street.)
Morgan wasn’t very familiar with Styles before the pop-up. He mistakenly referred to the former boy band as “First Direction” while speaking to Gothamist. But he did some research on Styles’ career after agreeing to rent his space to the pop-up and found him “quite genuine, charming and talented,” Morgan said. He didn’t anticipate the pop-up’s massive turnout, but says it made sense in hindsight.
“It’s a trend in the city,” he said. “People will line up for custard or yogurt or a bagel or the latest trending pancake house. It’s part of our daily peregrinations. We encounter a lot of lines.”
Residents have expressed mixed opinions on online forums over whether the people waiting in the Styles pop-up line have been disruptive to their daily lives. In a comment left Monday on an EV Grieve Instagram post about Slotnick, the account for Left Bank Books, a rare and used bookstore located in the West Village, suggested that the debate is beside the point.
“The fans in this line may be the most docile, innocuous people to ever wait in line for anything,” the comment reads. “The fact remains that these lines, mostly for corporate and private-equity backed businesses, impede traffic flows, obstruct small businesses and local residents, and don’t arise as an organic expression of a given neighborhood’s culture or street life.”
In her email, Slotnick described the East Village as “a thriving ‘small town’ where residents shop at local independent stores — and where the whole concept of standing in endless lines to buy stuff seems absolutely crazy.”
Morgan understood this overall sentiment and said, “I sympathize with her dismay.” But change, he continued, is “something we have to deal with.”
Ramsey Khalifeh contributed reporting.
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Sonia Rao
Sonia Rao is a culture reporter for WNYC and Gothamist. She previously covered entertainment and breaking news at The Washington Post. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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