Garage? Barrage!
That Cave returns for three days.
Some of you may have visited my Saugerties, NY antiques store That Cave (above) but I’m betting most of you did not. That Cave was open a little over a year and I documented its rise and fall from its opening Black Friday, Nov. 27, 2020 to its early forced demise a year later in my now-defunct newsletter See You Next Tue!
Launching an antiques store during the height of a pandemic was not something I ever thought I’d do, despite my father’s precursor, Memories Antiques in Great Barrington, MA. After my SiriusXM job came to an end I needed something to do and the opportunity presented itself when a cousin I hadn’t spoken with in thirty years reached out. She’d lost her location in Saugerties Village when the building sold and she wanted a partner to split the costs in a new locale. To secure the space (we were up against two other interested parties) I wrote a big ol’ fat check representing my portion of the rent for an entire year, going far outside my comfort zone, and a three-year lease was signed.
Thus began our Saugerties Sojourn.
Sweet T. was still working, so I made constant solo trips back and forth in my poor, beleaguered Mercedes to build out my space. I had a vision and went far afield to pull together all the elements – a 1940s glass display case, pipe shelving, a vintage cash register – to bring it into being. But there was a fatal flaw in the arrangement: I was downstairs from my cousin (hence That Cave) and access to my store was via a spiral staircase at the back of hers.1 Soon, my cousin grew weary of customers trudging through her shop to get to mine, especially if they bought something from me and not from her:
My cousin stoked her resentment even while Sweet T. and I rented an apartment down the street so we could house-hunt.
We were going all-in on Saugerties.
We hooked up with a local realtor and went looking. Then my cousin lowered the boom, saying I don’t think this is working out. I thought I had three years but it wasn’t my name on the lease. All I had was an agreement with my cousin and now she was throwing me out. What a miserable time that was, those four months between my birthday and the January day I bid a final goodbye to my store.
All the remaining store stock went into a storage unit, then was eventually shuttled down to our house where it took up too much of the garage and basement. I’ve been selling it off for years, online, at flea markets, pop-up markets, fairs, etc. Most recently I drove a bunch of stuff out to Pittsburgh and Akron. But now I’m making a final push to free up room in our small house.
If you missed your chance to visit That Cave, it returns for three days at the end of May:
Contact me for more info and I’ll update you here.
There was a back door in my place but you only knew about once you literally dropped in.