This Indie Bookstore Survived the Pandemic and Plans to Stick Around for Years to Come
The Spotty Dog is about gathering people and giving us a place to feel connected, which feels especially important right now
“See you at Spotty!”
That’s short for The Spotty Dog Books & Ale, founded in 2005 by Kelley Drahushuk and her husband Alan Coon. Located in the former Evans Hook and Ladder firehouse, one of six historic firehouses still standing in Hudson, New York, the name was inspired by a local Dalmation.
The Spotty Dog is our source for conversation with friends, art supplies, and loads of books across all genres. When I first moved here, I wondered who had come up with the genius idea of combining a bookstore with a friendly pub in a gorgeous old firehouse. Well, let me tell you a story that is so very emblematic of Hudson.
Back in 1856, Kelley Drahushuk’s great-great-great-grandfather, Robert Evans, bought a brewery that was established in 1786 in a whaling town on the Hudson River. (Yes, whalers, who moved to Hudson from Nantucket Island, off the coast of Massachusetts, but that’s another story.) Later, Robert’s brother and grandsons took over. The brewery produced sufficient wealth to purchase the eponymous firehouse. Prohibition shut down legal brewing in 1920 and the brothers were divided over how to proceed.
The family retained the business name and trademark but sold the brewery itself, most likely to one of many successful bootleggers of the time (Legs Diamond was busy across the river in Catskill, but that’s also another story). Generations later, Kelley’s uncle, who owned C.H. Evans Brewing at the Albany Pump Station brewpub, bought the original Evans firehouse in Hudson with the idea of opening another brewpub, but because business in Albany took up most of his life, the building sat empty for several years.
“And then,” Kelley explains, “as they do in this town…people started to get riled up. ‘Why does this building just sit here empty? And what about the brewpub we were supposed to get?’”
Under pressure to fill the space, Kelley’s uncle asked his family if anyone had ideas for how to use the building. Kelley and Alan suggested moving their art supply shop up Warren Street to the firehouse and adding a bookstore.
“How about a bookstore with beer?” her uncle suggested.
Thus, The Spotty Dog Books & Ale was born.
“Ultimately, the community dictates what we carry.” Spotty Dog stocks everything from fiction, nonfiction, cookbooks, art books, and children’s books, and the staff will special order anything they don’t have in stock. The bar serves local brews and kombucha on tap, as well as a selection of wines, sake, and non-alcoholic beverages. A portrait of C.H. Evans presides over the cash register as a reminder of The Spotty Dog’s origin story.
In March of 2020, Spotty closed to in-store shopping, music events, trivia nights, author readings, and impromptu parties, but the store had another setback in late November when a leak in an upstairs washroom flooded part of the main floor. It took months to restore the historic ceiling, repairs walls, install a new floor, and restock shelves of drowned books.
“Luckily, the Tuesday after the repairs were finished was when Obama’s memoir A Promised Land came out and we had all the copies ready to go.” By then, customers were used to ordering books ahead and coming to the front door to complete purchases. “If this had happened during a regular holiday season, when people are expecting to shop inside, it would have been a complete disaster.”
Now that most of our community is vaccinated, Kelley and her staff have worked hard to keep Spotty Dog open. “I want to do whatever makes them feel safest and comfortable and able to work. If they get sick. I can’t be open at all.”
The good news for The Spotty Dog is that the pandemic certainly didn’t stop people from reading escapist novels like Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation and Casey McQuiston’s Red, White, and Royal Blue, which have been huge hits at the store as well as history books and mysteries.
“And classics, and I think many booksellers would tell you that,” Kelley says.
People stuck at home found time to tackle George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte, and Herman Melville(speaking of whales). In our foodie city, residents couldn’t eat out as they once did, so they bought lots of cookbooks, even pricey ones. “We’ve had years when we couldn’t get enough copies of Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat, and you know, that’s a forty dollar book.” As a Great British Baking Show super-fan, I bought one of Paul Hollywood’s recipe books and spent many a 2020–2021 weekend afternoon kneading dough and watching it rise.
With kids stuck at home alongside their parents, The Spotty Dog did a brisk business in children’s classics as well. Kelley brought home her own childhood favorite: C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to see if her kids would love it as much as she had as a girl, and to her delight, they did. The Boxcar Children and Anne of Green Gables have also been popular family reads.
The good news for The Spotty Dog is that the pandemic certainly didn’t stop people from reading escapist novels like Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation and Casey McQuiston’s Red, White, and Royal Blue, which have been huge hits at the store, as well as history books and mysteries.
Additionally, the Black Lives Matter movement has brought much-needed attention to the white-centric nature of the book industry. Publishers are examining acquisition, hiring, and promotion policies and booksellers are taking a hard look at how to make positive change in their stores.
“You have to think about this when you’re curating,” Kelley says. “You want to be more present and more thoughtful, not only with what you’re buying but how you’re displaying it in your store.” Since we really do judge books by their covers, the visibility of titles by previously marginalized authors is integral to encouraging readers to try something new. For Kelley, this means considering book choices and promotion with a different eye: how many books by women are facing out on the shelves, where they get maximum exposure? How many books by women and men of color? Is it all white men in the history section? How many Asian authors does she carry? With this new awareness, Kelley saw books like Felicia Rose Chavez’s How to Be an Anti-Racist, Stamped by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi, and Robin Diangelo’s White Fragility become bestsellers.
“I think we’re all just trying to navigate a lot of things at once,” she says. “And it’s good. It’s a reckoning that’s been a long-time coming. We’re all trying, and I think that’s an improvement, but clearly, there’s a long way to go.”
Everyone loves the idea of having a bookstore in their town, but sometimes they forget to show their financial love during a time when it’s so easy to order everything online. The death of independent bookstores has been well-documented, but Kelley reassures me that local bookstores are on the rise and that her trade association is growing every year.
The non-profit model of Bookshop.org makes it possible for stores like The Spotty Dog to offer the convenience of mail order without having to do the packing and shipping themselves. You can choose which store you want to support, and a percentage of profits are shared by all member bookstores. The Spotty Dog also has an account with Libro.com for audio titles. So, if you can’t get out of the house or need a lot of books delivered at once, you have options to help maintain the health of independent booksellers everywhere.
The Spotty Dog is about gathering people and giving us a place to feel connected, which feels especially important right now. Our community is fortunate to have a bookstore that feels like it’s been here forever — an old soul in a building with deep local history, and a staff that is committed to keeping us reading well into the future.
Julie Metz is the author of the newly released memoir Eva and Eve and the New York Times bestselling memoir Perfection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection. She has written for publications including The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Dame, sheknows.com, Salon, Tablet, Slice, Redbook, Glamour, Next Tribe, MrBellersneighborhood.com, and Coastal Living. Her essays have appeared in the anthologies The Moment, edited by Larry Smith, creator of “Six-Word Memoirs,” and The House That Made Me, edited by Grant Jarrett.
