Peak Organic Beer Launch at Portsmouth Book and Bar!

Peak Organic Beer Launch at Portsmouth Book and Bar on December 18th, 7 - 9 pm. Fresh hop your beer right in the bar!

Check out our Facebook page for more information on the event. 

http://www.facebook.com/PortsmouthBookAndBar?ref=hl

Review of Portsmouth Book and Bar

Very nice review by an Inn in Portsmouth, NH, the town of John Petrovato and his partners new bookstore project.


http://blog.martinhillinn.com/2012/12/a-unique-book-experience-arrives-in.html

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

A Unique Book Experience Arrives in Portsmouth NH

The newest addition to Portsmouth's literary and food scene is Book and Bar located in the heart of Market Square.  Housed in the old Custom's House Building with tall ceilings, spectacular moldings, and deep windows, this new bookstore combines the sale of like-new books with a cafe atmosphere.

Arranged around the perimeter of the cafe and in the back section are bookcases filled with over 17,000 books from fiction to science, philosophy to cookbooks, biography to travel.  Another 70,000 volumes await their turn on the shelves.  In the center of the space is an 8 to 10 seat bar overlooking the small food prep area.  There are also 10 tables for two, numerous cozy armchairs and a small sofa for curling up with your coffee while you check out a few books or visit with a friend.

The small menu includes three breakfast items for the early birds, Book and Bar opens at 10:00 a.m.  Lunch items include salads and pressed sandwiches.  I had the Brie and Quince sandwich with sliced apples and a small watercress salad.  At $7.00, it was a great light dinner or afternoon snack.  Dinner items include small, tapas like dishes as well as cheese and charcuterie plates.  Prices range from $4.00 to $10.00.

Beverages include an array of locally brewed beers on tap and bottled.  A variety of red and white wines can be paired with the cheese plate.  For those cold, wintery afternoons, you can enjoy coffees, teas, hot cider and cocoa. 

Located just a 10-15 minute walk from the Martin Hill Inn, I think our guests are really going to enjoy Book and Bar while they explore Portsmouth.  In between shopping, after touring the Strawbery Banke Museum or even after dining out at one of the local restaurants, this is a great place to relax, unwind, recharge and buy a good book.

Book and Bar is located at 40 Pleasant Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801.  Telephone: 603-427-9197.

Portsmouth Book and Bar mission statement

Planned opening for early Sept., 2012 in Portmsouth, NH.

 The three of us, John Petrovato, David Lovelace & Jon Strymish, have worked together on various bookstores and cafes for over two decades. We are currently building a unique blend of bookstore, cafe and wine/beer bar for downtown Portsmouth.  Collectively we have over 75 years of owning bookstores and cafes in New England. Our other locations offer highly selective used and discount titles and host readings, music and community events. Our vision for Portsmouth couples all this with an upscale café serving espresso, baked goods and small plates. We plan to push past the all too familiar hybrid of stale muffins and paperbacks, create bookstore cafe with European flair – a literary salon with fine books and wines. 

The bookstore will resemble John Petrovato’s two Boston area shops, Raven Books in Harvard Square and on Newbury Street.  The bookstore will stock around 15,000 well selected titles with an emphasis on literature and  the arts. The Raven’s are not musty bookshops but have established themselves as two of the best shops in the country. In fact, as opposed to the growing trend of bookstores closing, both Raven’s have had their best year yet in 2011. The Raven won The Boston Globe’s “best of the new” in 2010, and The Boston Phoenix’s reader’s poll in 2011 and has been featured on MSN’s website and a dozens of other literary journals and magazines.  

Jon Strymish recently sold New England Mobile Book Fair in Newton, MA.  NEMB was a highly respected as well as the largest independent bookstore in New England for the past 2 decades. 

Over the past twenty years, David Lovelace’s store, The Montague Bookmill, has become an iconic cultural presence in Western Massachusetts. The bookmill had been co-owned with both John Petrovato and Jon Strymish over the past 20 years. The bookstore, café and performance space has been featured numerous times in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Yankee Magazine. After selling the Bookmill, Dave wrote and published  a book with Penguin. 

The Cafe will offer espresso and pastries in the morning and move on to creative small plates through the evenings. We will feature a small, handpicked selection of fine wines and micro beers to complement the food. Our readings and musical acts will showcase both local and national acts. We are experienced and connected – we’ve booked music for 20 years.  Our intention is not to build a nightclub but to book events that nicely complement the bookstore. 

Even as more and more titles are downloaded, as the opportunity for browsing fine books shrinks, the surviving independent will become increasingly valued and the very presence of beautifully bound books will provide a rare pleasure. We believe bookshops can do more than survive but actually flourish by offering a palpable sense of place.  

Portsmouth book and bar "opening soon" sign

 

Raven Used Books to nest on Newbury Street, Boston

Raven Used Books to nest on Newbury

Bibliomaniac

By PETER KADZIS  |  March 17, 2010

When some years ago John Petrovato decided to make a career change, he swapped the insecurity of playing bass in a New Jersey–based indie-rock band for the uncertainty of selling used books in Montague, Massachusetts, a mill town on the banks of the Connecticut River not far from Springfield.

One thing led to another, and Petrovato moved his business, which came to be called Raven Used Books, to Amherst, and then opened a store in Northampton.

After a period of what investment bankers would call consolidation and diversification, Petrovato sold his interest in the still-thriving Northampton branch of Raven and transferred his Amherst operation to 52-B JFK Street in Cambridge, where for the last five years it has nested profitably in one of the nation's brainiest zip codes, 02138.

Although booksellers are not known to be among the most avaricious of capitalists, no one plays the bass professionally without at least flirting with the idea of greater glory.

So, with an eye toward duplicating the success he enjoys in Harvard Square, Petrovato is this Saturday opening a Raven Books at 263 Newbury Street in Boston's Back Bay.

At 1100 square feet, the Newbury outpost will be slightly larger than the JFK headquarters, which occupies 875 clean, well-lighted square feet. In a nod to the more cutthroat retail imperatives on the Boston side of the Charles, the extra 225 feet will be dedicated to display, which in the book biz means showing something more than the spines of its wares.

"Both stores stock about 15,000 books," Petrovato explains on a recent rainy afternoon, as he and employees prepare for the opening. "In Cambridge, we sell about 5000 a month. I expect that we'll do about the same here in Boston. . . . The challenge, the fun of a used book store, is finding the new books — well, the new old and used books — to keep our customers satisfied and coming back."

And is there a difference in the reading habits north and south of the river?

"We'll have more fiction in Boston than in Cambridge, more extensive art and arts volumes, and we'll carry cookbooks and children's literature," he notes. "We won't have a post-colonialism section, but we will carry philosophy

Read more: http://thephoenix.com/boston/life/98660-raven-used-books-to-nest-on-newbury/#ixzz1yKUur4W5

harvardsquare.com listing of John Petrovato's Raven Used Books

Raven Used Books

52-B John F. Kennedy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
ravencambridge@hotmail.com | http://www.ravencambridge.com617.441.6999 

 

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Raven Used Books specializes in carefully selected scholarly used books. Adding over 1,000 books a week, Raven always has fresh stock on the shelves. Particularly strong categories include, philosophy, art, architecture, history, political theory, anthropology, religion, literature, and poetry.

Raven Used Books are always buying good paperback and harcover books. Please make an appointment to sell books. Feel free to contact us for more information or questions about stock.

Visit Website

Monday-Thursday 10-9
Friday & Saturday 10-10
Sunday 11-8

http://www.harvardsquare.com/Home/Shops/Raven-Used-Books.aspx

Boston Globe article on John Petrovato, Jon Strymish's new bookshop

Jon Strymish getting back into books

NAMES

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

May 30, 2012|Mark Shanahan

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Some people never learn. People like Jon Strymish. Just a few months after selling the New England Mobile Book Fair, the Newton bookstore owned by his family for over 50 years, Strymish and two partners have plans to open another bookstore, this one in Portsmouth, N.H. “I guess I’m not very bright,” joked Strymish. “I don’t know anything else.” He’s working withDavid Lovelace and John Petrovato to create Portsmouth Book and Bar. As the name suggests, the 2,800-square-foot bookstore will have a bar and feature occasional live entertainment. “We’ve taken a hard look at bookselling’s future,” the group explained in its application to the city. “Great titles are not enough. Pretty views are not enough. Frankly a good cup of coffee isn’t enough. So we’ve added beer, wine, and sophisticated snacks. . . . We promise to push past the all-too-familiar hybrid of stale muffins and paperbacks and create bookstore cafe with an old-world ambience — a literary salon offering espresso, craft beers, wine, and creative small plates. There will be no Formica, no paperback pulp, no french fries.” But why Portsmouth? “Because it’s groovy and there’s a lot of foot traffic,” Strymish said. “But groovy is the key.” (He also signed a non-compete agreement with Tom Lyons, the new owner of the New England Mobile Book Fair, which prohibits him from opening a store within 60 miles of Newton.) Lovelace and Petrovato are not new to the business. They are former owners of the Montague Bookmill, and Petrovato also owns Raven Used Books in Harvard Square. (Interestingly, the current owner of the Montague Bookmill is screenwriter Susan Shilliday, whose credits include “Legends of the Fall” and several episodes of “thirtysomething.”) With a little luck, Strymish said, the new place will be open around Labor Day.

http://articles.boston.com/2012-05-30/names/31897626_1_bookstore-paperbacks-new-owner