Walk down any street in New York City and you’ll see empty storefronts, lots of them. It’s sad and disturbing because retail is any great city’s lifeblood. The connective tissue between people and architecture. That’s what makes streets and avenues sing, lends them electricity; window-shopping is what turns a forced march into a stroll.
I’ve heard various explanations for why this is so. Among them landlords asking unreasonable rents and the so-called Amazon Effect. The disruption caused retail by e-commerce.
However, there are cities and towns that seem to be bucking the effect. Fortunately, two of them are in my backyard – Hudson and Chatham, NY.
I’m not suggesting that upstate stores have it easy. But they certainly seem to have a pulse. I dropped by one of them in particular last Saturday, Small Business Saturday, to find out why.
It’s called Pookstyle and it’s on Main Street in Chatham. Kaarin “Pook” Lemstrom-Sheedy (the nickname was name given to her by her father when she was born) runs the store with her husband Bob.
She gave me her theory about why they’re thriving. “My theory has a lot to do with curating,” she said as we sat in the store’s back room while business buzzed out front. “You can get anything anywhere. It’s the mix. Having a point of view.”
I suppose the store might be called a gift shop. But it’s obvious from the second you step inside that it benefits from a refined eye. The objects on the tables and surrounding walls seem the result of choice and deliberation, if not necessarily an excess of soul-searching.
“Pookstyle is a sense of humor, color, fun,” Kaarin said, describing her curatorial guidelines. There’s also a Scandinavian influence; the Scandinavians have a talent for finding that sweet spot between practicality and whimsy.
Pookstyle sells things such as colorful Aalto tumblers, a Winter in Central Park jigsaw puzzle and “This Book Will Put You To Sleep.” It’s an attractive hardcover addition to any nightstand with typically somnambulant chapter headings such as “The Hapsburg Empire” parentheses “The Early Years.”
The gentle excitement I felt stepping through the front door was reminiscent of childhood experiences of places like stationary shops. They even had a particular smell – your senses flooding with the fragrance of… what was it? New unopened things begging for your consideration?
I’m not sure what mustered the magic back then since paper doesn’t give off much in the way of scent. Maybe it was the smell of Scotch “Magic” Tape or Dymo label makers.
In any case, it was a critical mass of things – most within financial reach of even a kids’ allowance.
If Pookstyle bears more than a passing resemblance to a first rate museum gift shop that’s not by accident. Kaarin created The Store Next Door at the Whitney Museum of American Art when it was on Madison Avenue; Hardware, the giftshop at MassMoCA and The Shop at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s estate in Lenox, MA.
But before that both she and Bob were in the book business, running Scribner’s, the glorious Beaux Arts bookstore at Fifth Avenue and 48th street. And then Bob owned Berkshire Books, a used and rare bookstore on Park Row in Chatham.
They’ve been on Main Street since last Easter. Business is good, Kaarin reported, fueled by loyal customers and newcomers to the region. “There seems to be new energy,” Kaarin noted. “Lots of young homeowners have taken to the area. The farms and the farming. The food. The beer. It’s a good time and place.”
Much of our conversation was consumed by book collecting, which seems both Kaarin and Bob’s first passion, and one of mine. Particularly, the thrill of the hunt -- the first editions they discovered and those that got away.
The books Pookstyle sells are primarily tasteful design books.
Kaarin remembered a children’s book by the poet Elizabeth Bishop with beautiful woodcuts that she sold before she knew who Elizabeth Bishop was and discovered how much she loved her work.
But then there was a volume she found on the twenty-five cent pile in a Hudson shop signed by Billy Holiday. That promptly went to auction.
And the first edition of Charlotte’s Web that the owner of the bookstore refused to part with as soon as he realized the treasure that had been hiding in his stacks.
The couple ran Berkshire Books on Park Row for eight years until the book business changed and slowed down.
Hence, Pookstyle.
My wife bought a throw pillow decorated with geese and bears. I’ve got my eye on a few Canetti magnetic frames. They come in clear, aqua and cinnamon and they’re suitable for photos, pressed flowers, sketches, and anything else thin enough to be wedged between two pieces of plexiglass.
They also took me back to the colorfully florescent Lucite boxes I bought at the Lincoln Center gift shop back in the Sixties, probably on my way home from Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts and have, somewhere, to this day.
But isn’t that the ultimate point of a store like Pookstyle and the measure of its success? To unleash the eternal eleven year old in you.
“Kids of all ages,” is how Kaarin described the store’s target demographic. “I like that idea.”
But actual children, too. “Kids,” Kaarin added proudly, “seem to be particularly delighted when they come in here.”
Ralph Gardner, Jr. is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found at ralphgardner.com
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