Blackout 2003: Independent Booksellers a Beacon in the Dark

Maybe somebody up there likes independent booksellers. Or maybe it was simply a coincidence that the majority of Northeastern booksellers who spoke to BTW about last Thursday's blackout explained that -- while all around them other business owners fumbled through the dark -- for reasons sometimes unknown, their lights never went out. And for one night, these independent bookstores were not only a symbolic, but also a literal, beacon of light in their communities.

In Syracuse, New York, My Sister's Words bookstore teetered on the verge of a blackout that never materialized. "We were very lucky," said owner Mary Ellen Kavanaugh. "We just had brownouts. Other people around us [lost power]. I don't know why. Most of the city was out."

Despite having power, however, the bookstore did not see any business that night after the power outage struck in eight states at a little after 4:00 p.m. On Friday, Kavanaugh said, the store did its bit to conserve energy, and she kept the air conditioner off. Though it was a very hot day, "we brought in extra fans, and it was fine," she said. "So we suffered for a day, but that was about it -- and I wouldn't even really call it 'suffering.'"

In nearby Oswego, New York, three of the town's four main downtown street corners went dark. The one corner that maintained power happened to be where the river's end bookstore was located. "Fortunately for us, our bookstore was spared," said Bill Reilly, the bookstore's owner. "There are four prime corners in the downtown area, and our corner was the only one lit -- it was kind of freaky."

Reilly noted that they had a lot of people in the bookstore if only because everything was working. Also, "there's a Farmer's Market down the street on every Thursday" that generally increases traffic, he explained. "But it seemed to be heavier this Thursday because our lights were on -- it was a welcoming place."

The reason that Coliseum Books in New York City maintained power wasn't due to some kind of mystical good fortune, noted co-owner George Leibson. His store had power because the building where the store is located has its own generating plant. However, while Thursday's power outage resulted in the bookstore's café being mobbed for a short while, overall, "it didn't do us any good," he said. "We kept our bathroom open, and [people] trashed the whole route to the bathroom."

Of course, some bookstores that spoke to BTW did lose power on Thursday night. "Our lights went out, the computers went down, and we grabbed for our flashlights," said Susan Novotny of The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany, New York. "We maybe stayed open until about 5:30 p.m. because we had a few customers who figured they could read by candlelight. We had natural light, but that lit up only about 50 percent of the store." Novotny noted that her area suffers a power outage almost every year, so Thursday's outage was "not too much of a disruption." And Friday, it was back to business as usual, she reported.

Located just across the river from New York City, Bennett Books in Wyckoff, New Jersey, lost power and closed around 5:00 p.m. on Thursday. "We had utility men working in front of the store, and we lost power the week before," said John Bennett, the store's co-owner. At first, "we thought it was a local situation until we listened to news reports." Ultimately, because the store had a radio that worked, Bennett Books became a "news repository" for the community, Bennett said. "Unlike the 1977 blackout, not everyone has transistor radios. A number of people came in to ask if it was an act of terrorism or to ask when the power was coming back on."

Aside from cutting business by more than a third on Thursday, it had no real impact on weekend business, Bennett told BTW. In fact, some good came out of the blackout. One of his regular customers came in on Friday and told Bennett that, like countless commuters, he was stuck in New York when a Wyckoff resident offered him a ride home. "[Our customer] asked her if he could do anything [to repay her for the ride], and she said she was part of a literacy group," Bennett explained. [The driver] suggested that he could donate books to the group and gave him her card. "So he came in and bought $100 worth of books," Bennett said. --David Grogan