Paperboy Prince Love Gallery
Photos by Curt Saunders
Paperboy Love Prince is easily one of Brooklyn’s most prolific multi-hyphenates. Among other accomplishments, the 28-year-old is an activist, rapper (and the first act signed to Azealia Banks’ record imprint) and event producer.
Until last week’s election, they were a New York City mayoral candidate whose platform called for a $2,000 monthly universal basic income, healthcare for all, reparations for slavery and abolishing the police.
They’re also the owner of Paperboy Prince Love Gallery, a Bushwick vintage clothing store, community space and headquarters for various mutual aid projects. Yet for all these wide-ranging creative and professional pursuits, Paperboy sees a clear throughline tying everything together: love and community.
“So many folks need actual help right now, and they need something positive to believe in,” says the Brooklyn-born, Baltimore and D.C.-raised organizer. “That's what I try to provide with my art. That is definitely what we’re doing with our campaign. Another big part of it, too, is amateurism as a form of inspiration. A lot of folks get so caught up in thinking, ‘I gotta wait until I graduate from this school or until that person tells me I'm good enough.’ But I’m showing people that you have all you need, and you can do it now — and you can do it with real love and not be ashamed about that.”
“We're meshing mutual aid with business in a way that is the future.”
On its surface, Love Gallery is a vintage clothing store selling eclectic retro pieces, along with stylish accessories from local Black and brown designers. But the bubblegum pink storefront, which opened last September, is also the site of operations for Paperboy’s well organized food network, Our Food NYC, which provides free groceries every Wednesday at 9 a.m. Powered 100% by donations, volunteers hand out fresh seasonal produce, cereal and pasta, bags of rice and lentils, canned goods and more each week to lines of people stretched down the block.
“We're meshing mutual aid with business in a way that is the future,” says Paperboy, whose team had already been organizing food drives since March of 2020, partnering with other Black-led organizations like Brooklyn Packers long before the shop even opened. “It's about setting a new standard for how to do business post-COVID.”
Paperboy Prince Love Gallery also keeps a community fridge outside the store, stocked daily with donated fresh food, and a small community library tucked beneath its front bench. Ambitious new projects on the horizon include Tiny House NYC — a protest piece (still in beta phase) that Paperboy hopes will let people rent an insulated, solar powered tiny house for free emergency housing — and an urban farm. You can donate to these and other initiatives at tinyurl.com/LoveGallery.
“I want people to feel like they’re at a queer art show at Moses’ house. Or the inside of a kids show that an adult is totally down to watch for a long time,” Paperboy says of the blue-sky-and-rainbows theme at Love Gallery. “But a big part of the design isn’t visible to the eye — I curate energy that people can walk in and feel. They should have a better day just by breathing the air inside.”
Accordingly, in addition to the racks of vintage clothing and locally designed sunglasses, bags and jewelry for sale (not to mention the free groceries handed out on Wednesdays), the Love Gallery hosts casual late-night kickbacks and karaoke. Outside the shop sits the “Love Tank,” a turquoise shuttle bus that serves as another hangout spot for the community. “I listen to the neighborhood, and there's been a bunch of dope ideas about things that people want to do here that we let them spearhead and create,” says Paperboy. “Things are definitely evolving.
1254 Myrtle Avenue., Brooklyn, paperboyprince.com
