Bookshop aims for top-shelf selection
There probably aren’t many independent bookstore owners who have graduated from Harvard Business School.
Kathryn Grantham is one of them.
Having moved from Cambridge, Mass., to San Francisco a year ago, Grantham is the city’s newest bookseller, the owner of a shop that just opened in the Outer Sunset.
“The reception has been overwhelming,” Grantham said. “San Francisco’s a book town, but I didn’t realize just how full the area is of readers and creative people.”
Located at 4033 Judah St., just a few blocks from Ocean Beach, Grantham’s shop, Black Bird Bookstore, is the only bookstore in the neighborhood, a welcome addition to a sleepy, unassuming part of town. It’s in a narrow 900square-foot space that had been occupied by Small Talkers, a preschool, and its aesthetic is minimalist and tasteful.
And its business model represents a break from the past.
Unlike many stores that are lined floor to ceiling with thousands of books, Black Bird Bookstore has only roughly 250 books for sale. Grantham says she expects the stock to rise to 1,000 titles.
“It’s a curated bookstore,” she said. “It’s a different experience and always will be. But everybody finds some-
“It’s a curated bookstore. It’s a different experience and always will be.” Kathryn Grantham, owner, Black Bird Bookstore
thing.”
In the age of Amazon, Grantham noted, many readers now go online to buy specific titles.
“The model of 50,000 titles is just not current,” she said. It’s a belief that was reinforced by her time at Harvard Business School, which she attended after running a Manhattan feminist bookstore, Bluestockings, for five years. She founded the shop in 1999, and it’s now a social justice, activist bookstore.
“I have no idea why I was admitted,” she said about Harvard, laughing. “I was running a radical feminist bookstore. But I actually loved it. It was a terrific experience.”
A 41-year-old native of New Orleans who moved to New York after college, Grantham says she has kept track of the book industry for the past two decades.
“I believe people come to bookstores in search of ideas and recommendations,” she said. “If you mapped where people gravitate to most in a bookstore, it is the ‘staff picks’ section. We are turning that section into a whole store.”
And so Black Bird will sell only books that are recommended by Grantham and her staff of six employees. All the books are displayed with their covers facing out, accompanied by handwritten notes from the staff.
Grantham also plans to update sections on a regular basis, making them topical. “For instance,” she said, “right now we have a section on climate change and the environment.”
Another section is titled “Our country, our culture.” Curating such a section, she said, “gives me the opportunity to pull together and highlight some of the terrific, diverse voices that are being published today, and hopefully help us all have a deeper understanding of who we are as a people.
“Books bridge gaps in our own experience,” she added. “Perhaps I am also hoping to find the answer to the question of how we got here in this Trump era.”
Before moving to San Francisco, Grantham regularly visited the Bay Area to spend time with three younger siblings who live here. She and her husband, Oliver, an investor in forestry and an avid surfer, are building a house on a property they bought in the Sunset three years ago, initially drawn to the nearby surfing.
The couple have three sons, ages 6, 4 and 1. Grantham says theirs is one of the many young families in the neighborhood. She’s passionate enough about children’s literature that half of her store’s books will be for younger readers. She even had a tree house built, including a small oak tree for children to climb. And the shop will host a children’s story time every Saturday at 9 a.m.
How did Grantham conceive of the store’s name? She wanted a local reference. While she was pondering possible names, she said, “those big black birds kept flying into my view. It also has nice alliteration.”
As familiar as Grantham is with San Francisco, it’s in opening a bookstore, she said, that “you certainly feel like you’re really sinking your roots into the community. Which is why I love bookstores.”
More information: www.blackbirdbooksf.com
“Books bridge gaps in our own experience. Perhaps I am also hoping to find the answer to the question of how we got here in this Trump era.” Kathryn Grantham, Black Bird Bookstore