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All photos of the interior of Open as it was last seen on Retro Row before closing in 2012.

November 15 has many bittersweet memories for Sé Reed: it marks the anniversary of when her famed bookstore Open, voted Best Bookstore by our readers, opened in 2003 (where District Wine currently is) and closed in 2012 (now Immoni on Retro Row), leaving Long Beach deprived of one of its gems. That last note, with its obvious tinge of sadness, might have been more disheartening were it not for Reed’s own words during the time she closed up shop:

“I’m closing this location, but I’m doing it to find a space that will enable me to bring the bookstore into the 21st century.”

For those who don’t know Reed—and her audacious personality that gleams with sweaty determination—we suggest you don’t take her words lightly. Her nod toward eventually re-opening Open provided a bit of hope for the patrons who yearned to score old copies of Adbusters or find independently printed books filled with the words of Long Beach poets or meander past a window display beautifully decked out.

Eleven years after opening Open to the day, she announced on her Facebook that Open is re-opening in what will soon be Long Beach’s first book bar, The Brass Lamp.

Open03“I have always hoped to re-open Open,” Reed said. “I wasn’t sure how where that would be or how that would look, but for the past two years I have been casually looking at spaces and considering various options, including other cities. Nothing was viable, or even tempting, until I met Samantha.”

Samantha Argosino and Reed share a lot: both are entrepreneurs with hearts that cling to classics more than trends and a love of the written word that supersedes the vast majority of people. When the pair met last year during a social media seminar that Reed taught, Argosino was eager to tell Reed of her ambitious book bar plan—a plan that Reed had precisely dreamed of doing with Open.

“Open always had a ‘book bar’ vibe, but without the bar,” Reed said. “At Open’s first location, we had gone pretty far toward converting Open into a bar/bookstore hybrid but we couldn’t come to a final lease agreement with the landlord. Open’s second home on 4th Street was across the street from an elementary school, so a bar was never an option. Also, a bar and a bookstore are very different in terms of operations, staffing and regulations, and despite having gotten certified as a bartender when I was in college, I knew I didn’t want to own and operate a bar/restaurant.”

Hence the idealism in pairing up with Argosino: each can maintain their own brand while also using each other for their own set of resources. Argosino, on one hand, gets the almost-20 years of bookstore experience that comes with Reed along with the brand quality of Open while Reed gets have an environment that fits her aesthetic and hopes for Open’s place in the coming years while not having the stress of managing a space (alone) day-to-day.

Reed insists that one thing needs to remain clear and that is the fact that is a new Open, not a rehashed version of its former incarnation.

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Above photo courtesy of Lacey Lampe.

“The most important thing to know about the new Open is that it is just that: a new Open,” Reed said. “The culture of Long Beach itself has changed a lot in the past 11 years, and Open has changed along with it.”

The changes over the past decade are many, including those within Reed’s life: now in a band, she tours endlessly in addition to tackling speaking and teaching gigs (re: aforementioned social media forum). Perhaps more pointedly is that the other half of the former open, her business partner Shea M. Gauer, is no longer a part of the page-turner business.

“Shea left to pursue a professional career a few months before I closed the 4th Street space in 2012,” Reed said. “As a musician and artist, he brought a lot of experience to our live events, and I’m not going to try to recreate or replace that… Samantha and her team have a plan for events, art, and music at The Brass Lamp, and Open will be a part of that, but they will not be Open events.”

Open03Fear not, Open lovers, for this doesn’t mean that the foundation has given way and you’re going to find yourself in an unknown world of new-ness. Open’s singular focus in The Brass Lamp will be the books, “presented as objects of literary art,” in the eloquent words of Reed. “The in-store selection will be heavily curated to fit the space, and there will be an online component for the books I can’t fit on the shelves.”

Perhaps the best piece of literary art is the welcoming back of the literary mistress herself, Ms. Reed. Like an English student forced into the humdrum of daily living, there is a blue sensation that comes with becoming detached from books as one realizes they read less and less.

“I have been rather obsessed with books since before my first bookstore job at 16 and I have missed them considerably,” Reed said. “I am excited to be a part of the literary culture of Long Beach again and to feed my fellow bibliophiles need for awesome books. I’m also excited about The Brass Lamp simply because I want to hang out there. I think it’s going to be a cultural cornerstone for Long Beach, and I’m thrilled that Open is going to be a part of it.”

We’ll definitely put a bookmark on that.