How do you move an entire bookstore?
SubText Books is moving on up.
The formerly subterranean shop has left its basement digs on Cathedral Hill and found a second life above ground in downtown St. Paul.
The store will (book)mark the occasion with five days of literary festivities and a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony at 11 a.m. Friday at 6 W. Fifth St. (Find the full schedule from SubText.)
But anyone who has ever had to move their own book collection has to be thinking: How do you move an entire bookstore?
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Moving a bookstore, by the numbers
• 400 boxes
• 75 trips from the old store to the new store
• 3 weeks of packing, moving and unpacking
• 300 staff hours of schlepping, sweating and alphabetizing
• 17,000 total books moved
Matt Keliher, a SubText bookseller who helped oversee the move, stumbled across the perfect book while packing up: F. Scott Fitzgerald's "On Booze."
"That made for some easy reading after the dog days of the move," he said.
According to SubText, this is the first time downtown St. Paul has had a full-service, independent bookstore in more than 20 years.
They opened their doors while still unpacking, and customers have already been stopping in for summer reading recommendations.
"I'm excited about Catie Disabato's debut novel 'The Ghost Network,' said Keliher. "It's a genre-busting philosophical mystery that deals with conspiracy theories and popular music in the underbelly of Chicago. It was recently reviewed in the New York Times and is a great summer read."
There's more where that came from, now at the corner of 5th and Wabasha.