Now it definitely feels like Christmas in Hanover.
After nearly a year passed without a bookstore in town, Still North Books & Bar has opened for business, bringing comfort and joy to book lovers and readers who have been suffering in inconsolable grief since the Dartmouth Bookstore closed 12 months ago.
And Still North has more than books on the menu: Literally, it has a menu.
Owner Allie Levy is combining the traditional retail book shop with a cafe, wine and beer bar that will offer light repasts such as flatbreads, cheese, salads and charcuterie. Tables, chairs and stools at counters to accommodate seating of 45 are placed throughout the store-cafe-bar with a serving area and food counter at one end.
Originally from the Detroit area, Levy, a 2011 graduate of Dartmouth (where perhaps prophetically she was an English major), said she always thought it odd that there hadn’t been an independent bookstore in Hanover — the Dartmouth Bookstore, originally independent, was owned in later years by Barnes & Noble — given it is a college town with a sizable book-loving and book-buying population.
(Left Bank Books above Dirt Cowboy cafe has continued to be a stalwart seller of used books).
Although the bricks-and-mortar retail segment has its share of challenges these days, Levy embraces it.
“It’s fast-paced, and I like interacting with customers,” she said. “And it beats sitting behind a desk all day.”
With an entrance on Allen Street, Still North Books is located in a renovated light and airy space that had been the back end of the Dartmouth Bookstore. Couches around a large coffee table with a top that lifts open to reveal a puzzle table are set near the front window, and a handsome brick wall that divides the principal retail space from the cafe and bar area.
Still North Books & Bar — the store takes its name from a line in Dartmouth College’s Alma Mater that says alumni shall always hold “the still North in their hearts” — had a “soft opening” Thursday, capping nearly a year of planning by Levy and building owner Jay Campion.
Levy had hoped to be open earlier in the fall, but construction delays forced her to push back the opening date, she said Wednesday during a break from prepping for the next day’s opening.
For the first few weeks, the shop will start with retail — it also sells puzzles and notebooks — and coffee while the food and beverage program will roll out “bit by bit.” Hours through the holidays will be 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (closing 1 p.m. on Christmas Eve) and then in mid-January will extend from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.
“We’ll have a grand opening when we get our liquor license,” said Levy; she hopes that will happen by January.
Carrier Roasting Co. in Northfield, Vt., is supplying the coffee beans, and tea is being sourced from In Pursuit of Tea, one of the top tea purveyors in the country.
As bookstores have been clobbered by Amazon, they are looking for new ways to differentiate themselves by providing an experience that shoppers can’t get in online shopping. This is especially the case with independent bookstores, which additionally have to compete with chain stores and discounters.
The concept of broadening the local bookstore into a multifunctional space where customers can enjoy an espresso or craft-brewed IPA and cheese platter over their laptop — and hopefully alongside a newly purchased book or two — is catching on around the country.
Levy plans a full events calendar with authors, story times and trivia and game nights.
“Our focus is on books and community but we hope people will come for our space” as well, she said.
With 2,500 square feet, Still North Books is considerably smaller than the two-floor, 21,000-square-foot Dartmouth Bookstore. While the selection was nice, the volume of business did not justify the space.
But Levy emphasized that her initial stock of 7,000 books was selected by her and the staff and, as might be expected in a college town, is heavy in literary fiction and nonfiction but also includes children’s and young adult literature, travel, cookbooks and essays and memoirs.
“We have capacity for 10,000 books, but we are leaving space for us to get to know the community,” she said.
Purchased nearly two years ago, the Enfield Gas & Go fuel stop and convenience store on Route 4 in Enfield now appears to be closed.
The reason for Gas & Go’s closing is not known, but not long after it came under a new ownership by an out-of-state operator the business found itself — literally — caught between two gas station and convenience stores, each subsequently opened by owners known well in the community.
In January 2018, Enfield Gas & Go, formerly Petro-Mart, was sold by longtime proprietors Jeff and Katie Pierson to OM Shiv Corp., of Salisbury, Mass., which also operates the Fast Freddie’s Mobil gas station and convenience store in Salisbury.
A telling sign: On Dec. 9, the New Hampshire Lottery Commission removed its lottery machine from Enfield Gas & Go, according to NHLC spokeswoman Maura McCann, who said the commission had been notified via email on Dec. 5 that the business had closed.
Enfield Gas & Go, located on the high-traffic Route 4 corridor between Enfield and Canaan, has recently seen one new gas station and convenience store open a mile to the west and another gas station and convenience store revitalized under new owners a mile to the east.
Fourteen months after the purchase of the former Petro Mart, Jake’s Market & Deli opened a new 9,000-square-foot store and gas plaza near the intersection of Route 4 and Maple Street while 2.7 miles east Cathy and Stu Bean a few months later took over the Pleasant Valley Store.
Cathy Bean had managed the Petro Mart before she and her husband bought the Pleasant Valley Store from Steve Ibey in 2018. Ibey had owned and run the Pleasant Valley Store — now renamed Cathy & Stu’s Pleasant Valley Store — for more than three decades and briefly leased it to another couple before the Beans came in and spent $250,000 upgrading the business.
It’s deadline time in the aviation industry — Santa and his flying reindeer-powered sleigh has to cover a few billion homes in a single night, and regional airline Cape Air needs to reach 10,000 “enplanements” from the Lebanon Municipal Airport to maintain its federal subsidy.
It could be close. The Hyannis, Mass.-based carrier that flies between Lebanon and Boston and Lebanon and White Plains, N.Y., daily may just make it.
As of Dec. 4, Cape Air had 9,440 enplanements compared with 9,498 enplanements at the same time last year, according to Chris Christopoulos, the Lebanon fire chief who is also the interim airport manager.
“Cape Air has told me they have over 700 pre-booked for December,” Christopoulos reported via email.
One sure sign that Cape Air is trying to make the quota by deadline is that it marks down the price of a one-way ticket between Lebanon and Boston’s Logan Airport.
On Wednesday last week, Cape Air was selling one-way tickets between the two cities for booking on Thursday and Friday for $25 to $29.
John Lippman can be reached at jlippman@vnews.com.
