Black Cat Pads Over to Its New Digs
(05/06/2009) Black Cat Books, which has sold used, rare, and
 Carissa Katz
|
collectible books from a tiny shop in Sag Harbor since 1996, closed its doors there late last month and reopened Friday in a more spacious spot on Bridgehampton’s Main Street.
“In Sag Harbor space was a real issue,” Dawn Hedberg said last Thursday while unpacking and arranging books in Bridgehampton. “For years, we wanted to make the move onto Main Street, but space never came up,” she said, and when it did it was too expensive. “It was really hard to find enough space to do a nice bookstore that was anything near affordable.”
Ms. Hedberg and her husband, Mike Kinsey, managed to cram an impressive number of titles into their 10-by-20-foot store opposite Java Nation in the Shopping Cove, but there was a lot that just wouldn’t fit on the limited shelf space.
Instead of expanding into a larger store, the couple expanded their online business. In fact, it was their Web sales that helped them afford the bookshop in Sag Harbor. They live on Shelter Island and kept a lot of books, including some interesting but obscure titles, in a second building at their property there.
“We hated having our collection so fractured,” Ms. Hedberg said.
A lot of the books that were relegated to Shelter Island can now fit in the Bridgehampton store, which is more than twice the size of the Sag Harbor shop. It has a tin ceiling with a huge skylight, wall-to-wall bookshelves, and enough space for a big display table in the center of the room.
“It’s funny how many boxes it takes to fill up one bookshelf,” Ms. Hedberg said after four days of intense moving. “Art and design books are heavy.”
“We are doubling the amount of books we’re able to have in the store,” she said. In Bridgehampton Black Cat will continue to focus on the same subject areas, “we’ll just have more of everything.” The shop carries general-interest fiction and nonfiction and specializes in books on art, photography, architecture and design, and antiques and collectibles.
“I think the kind of stuff we have works really well with all the antique stores in the area,” Ms. Hedberg said. “Designers come to Bridgehampton to look and shop and be inspired.”
In Sag Harbor, Black Cat was one of several bookstores, but it is the only retail bookshop in Bridgehampton. That should work to the owners’ advantage, and it will give visitors to Bridgehampton something new to do. “We’ll stay open late in the summer to take advantage of the restaurant crowd,” Ms. Hedberg said.
With more elbow room, they hope to host events, readings, and possibly book clubs in the off-season. Once things are going strong in Bridgehampton, they may even open a Shelter Island outpost on the weekends. Their property there is in a commercial district on Ferry Road.
The new shop has opened up “a whole new world for us,” she said.
Black Cat Books will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. In the summer, weekday hours will be extended until 8 p.m. and weekend hours until 10.