{"id":174719,"date":"2026-08-12T10:00:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T14:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=174719"},"modified":"2026-08-12T10:02:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T14:02:34","slug":"the-bookstore-slash-skate-shop-next-to-ballerina-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/08\/12\/the-bookstore-slash-skate-shop-next-to-ballerina-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bookstore-Slash-Skate-Shop Next to Ballerina Farm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Photo by Claire Carusillo.<\/p><\/div>\n

June 12<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our shop is in an old service station in a charming alpine town nestled within Utah\u2019s Wasatch Mountains. Here\u2019s the <\/span>oomph<\/span><\/i> of it: Avery, the only person who works here besides Galen and me, sells coffee in a waiting room we\u2019ve converted into a bar. In the first garage bay, Galen sells skateboards and enormous pairs of shorts. In the second garage bay, I sell books and art supplies and an assortment of Korean-formulated sunscreens. Some people have been calling the shop \u201cmaximalist,\u201d but I\u2019m actually quite particular about the goods we hawk.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarah\u2019s in from New York to help with our grand opening, and she prices our whole drinks menu and sets up the receipt printer. I\u2019ve known her since I was nineteen, and she\u2019s been doing stuff that I don\u2019t want to do for fifteen years now. Once, during the pandemic, we went glamping near Moab and almost died overnight from carbon-monoxide poisoning caused by a backfiring tent stove. I thought it was because we\u2019d eaten too much bread pudding before tucking in. She got us two free nights in an upgraded safari tent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first book I sell on our first day in business is a used copy of <\/span>Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School<\/span><\/i>, for seven dollars. It goes home with a high school English teacher on a daytime date. The next is a used copy of <\/span>The Land of Little Rain<\/span><\/i>, by Mary Austin, also for seven dollars, to a <\/span>studious young college student<\/span>. The third is a copy of Stephanie LaCava\u2019s <\/span>I Fear My Pain Interests You<\/span><\/i>, which goes to a girl who pays with her own money even though her parents are present. She seems to be around thirteen, and I worry for a moment that she\u2019s not old enough to read a book with so many lecherous older men skulking through its pages. But nobody ever monitored my reading when I was that age, and I turned out pretty much fine. I read a lot of Janet Evanovich\u2019s bounty hunter series.<\/span><\/p>\n

We look at the sales report at the end of the day. The only thing that moves more units than iced lattes are rolls of washi tape printed with bears playing the drums.<\/span><\/p>\n

June 13<\/b><\/p>\n

Turns out the people can\u2019t get enough fly-fishing guides from 1973.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Photo by Claire Carusillo.<\/p><\/div>\n

June 15<\/b><\/p>\n

Galen\u2019s been obsessed with the song \u201cReno,\u201d by Doug Supernaw, for the past six months. Neither of us has been to Reno, but I think it would be funny to get married there. Last fall we went to West Wendover, a bleached-out casino town just over the border in Nevada, on our way to see Nancy Holt\u2019s <\/span>Sun Tunnels<\/span><\/i>. A guy from New York City offered us \u201cherb\u201d inside one of the tubes, and I accepted. There wasn\u2019t any good souvenir shopping.<\/span><\/p>\n

The song \u201cReno\u201d is about a woman paramour who is apparently as callous and cruel as the city. (\u201cYou know the lady\u2019s a lot like Reno \/ She ain\u2019t got a heart and she don\u2019t care when you\u2019re down \/ Just like the lights of a casino \/ She\u2019ll pull you in and play with you awhile \/ But there ain\u2019t no way to win \/ I know she\u2019s a lot like Reno.\u201d)<\/span> We\u2019ve read that Reno\u2019s mayor banned the song from radio play in 1993. Supernaw shot back. It wasn\u2019t personal: Reno was the only city he knew that rhymed with <\/span>casino<\/span><\/i>. That\u2019s just how the chips fall sometimes, brother.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the shop, Galen talks to a family visiting from Reno and plays the song from the iPad. They don\u2019t seem to recognize it. The only song he listens to more than \u201cReno\u201d is \u201cBrigham Young,\u201d which was recorded in the sixties by a folk singer involved in the Salt Lake music scene named Rosalie Sorrels. Written in 1870, Sorrels\u2019s version goes like this:<\/span><\/p>\n

Brigham, Brigham Young
\n<\/span>It\u2019s a miracle he survived
\n<\/span>With his roaring rams and his pretty little lambs
\n<\/span>And his five and forty wives<\/span><\/p>\n

Number forty-five\u2019s about sixteen
\n<\/span>Number one is sixty and three
\nAnd among such a riot how he ever keeps \u2019em quiet
\nIs a downright mystery to me
\nFor they cackle and claw and jaw, jaw, jaw
\nEach one has a different desire<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I later learn that Rosalie Sorrels passed away in 2017 at her daughter\u2019s home in Reno.<\/span><\/p>\n

June 19<\/b><\/p>\n

On Fridays and Saturdays for the past year, Sprinter vans of women in mid-market prairie dresses get dropped off in the center of town and beeline to a farm store owned by a beautiful former ballerina with millions of Instagram followers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Her arrival in our small town last summer alarmed and dismayed me: I wanted to be the most notorious adult blond in the area. I am thirty-four, unmarried, and cohabitating with a forty-year-old skate rat; when we moved here from New York, for the first time in my unremarkable-but-peaceful-enough life, that was enough to make for a scandalous backstory.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ballerina\u2019s also blond acolytes have made parking at the nearby post office an all-day project. But now I kinda like having them all around. And the ballerina seems pretty committed to the farming thing, even if there have been a few missteps with regard to raw milk processing.<\/span><\/p>\n

June 20<\/b><\/p>\n

Eight skaters and one beautiful dog in an arm cast tumble out of a diesel truck. The dog is named Laika. They drove up from Salt Lake to take in a bit of mountain air and buy some of our branded merchandise. The shop grows anarchic and clangorous with so many boxy tees and \u201cYeah, mans\u201d flying around. They eventually leave us for sandwiches and the nearby creek. It\u2019s hot out. While peeing, I watch a just-uploaded Instagram video of them ripping cigs and baptizing one another in a stone reflection pool a customer of ours built into the riverbed.<\/span><\/p>\n

An hour later, Max, a straggler in their crew, shows up with a baby raccoon he\u2019s rescued. Because of a skate emergency, he can\u2019t stay long, so he nestles the baby in a Home Depot box out back. Galen keeps showing the raccoon to the children visiting the shop, and for about thirty seconds, I try to put a matronly stop to it, <\/span>jaw jaw jawing<\/span><\/i> about how word will get out that we\u2019re operating an illegal petting zoo on our ninth day in business. But then I, too, catch baby raccoon fever, and watch Rigby take an hour to eat a quarter of a banana.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Photo by Claire Carusillo.<\/p><\/div>\n

June 21<\/b><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been invited to our first party in Midway, at a remarkable home with a kitchen-island-size cheese plate and a DJ barn. During cocktail hour, we discover that most of the attendees left the Mormon Church in the past decade or so. They\u2019re all forthcoming about their personal lives and the fact that they\u2019re learning how to socialize with drink for the first time in their mid-fifties. Galen doesn\u2019t drink, but I have three White Claws and talk to so many interesting dads.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

June 24<\/b><\/p>\n

Orange smoke from forest fires is enveloping our valley, but incidentally, it makes the pink-stained plywood in the book room glow.<\/span><\/p>\n

I stay up too late reading Kaitlin Tiffany\u2019s feminist, Warren Commission\u2013questioning tome <\/span>The Housewives Underground<\/span><\/i>. I recommend it to Mary Ann, a former children\u2019s librarian who moved here from Dallas. I don\u2019t tell her that back in the day Kaitlin and I worked on different floors of the same office, and that she and Lizzie Plaugic cold-Slacked me, asking me to join their writing group, possibly changing the trajectory of my entire life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mary Ann tells me she was there the day Kennedy was assassinated, working admin as a college student at Parkland Hospital. Of course, her memories of the weeks when Texas governor John Connally, who was allegedly punctured by the same magic bullet that had just killed Kennedy, was legislating from his hospital bed don\u2019t jive with what the Warren Commission reported. She says she was part of the team that procured a phone line for him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I text Kaitlin and ask her, as a friend, not an author or an expert, what she thinks happened that day. She asks me my theories. I don\u2019t feel comfortable sharing them until I learn more about Fidel Castro\u2019s household staff at the Habana Hilton.<\/span><\/p>\n

June 25<\/b><\/p>\n

An email hits our shop inbox from our hacky sack manufacturer, an empath. It begins:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGalen\u2014I hate that I have to write you this email.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The custom-crocheted sacks have been held up in customs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0June 26<\/b><\/p>\n

Smoke everywhere, still. A huge sign is erected on Main Street alerting us to a $1,000 fine for lighting fireworks. In the past eight summers of living with Mars, our Jindo dog, I\u2019ve come to hate them anyway. He\u2019s jumpy and has seemingly learned to open locks with his mind.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

July 1<\/b><\/p>\n

Elliott and Rebekah invite us to a barbecue at their house in Wallsburg, a tiny farm town tucked into a mountain pass halfway to Provo. We\u2019ve become obsessed with Wallsburg town lore because a) Butch Cassidy\u2019s gang used to hide out there, allegedly, and b) its streets now seem to be governed by packs of semiferal dogs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The three hundred residents of Wallsburg are currently mobilizing against a newly created \u201cpreliminary municipality pilot program,\u201d which gives access to two developers in Utah each calendar year to establish new towns on undeveloped land without the voting consent of nearby neighbors. Elliott and Rebekah used to run a hyperlocal newspaper called the <\/span>Little Valley Dispatch<\/span><\/i>, where they got to the bottom of such matters. Now, they\u2019re focusing on raising two children and being software engineers.<\/span><\/p>\n

We eat burgers made from a Jersey cow that used to be their across-the-street neighbor. I\u2019m warned against approaching Mr. Handsome, their adult ram, because he\u2019s a literalist. Mars, who was also invited to the barbecue, won\u2019t stop hissing at their cat Maomao.<\/span><\/p>\n

July 4<\/b><\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m avoiding the mayor\u2019s calls and texts. He\u2019s got a great deal of books on silver mining, a personal interest of mine, but we can\u2019t seem to find the time to get over to his house to look at them.<\/span><\/p>\n

We approve Mars\u2019s request to work from home. This is the polite way of saying that he won\u2019t stop barking at small children and for now is not fit to be a shop dog. Later, we discover that he ate part of our bedroom window shade.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

July 6<\/b><\/p>\n

Four-sixths of my immediate family are in Utah to help with the shop. Alex and Ani, my brother and sister-in-law, are off somewhere being Swedish businessmen. Julia, my sister, who designed the shop interior for us, flew in from Denver and affixes hand-painted <\/span>STAFF PICKS<\/small><\/span> and <\/span>EMPLOYEES ONLY<\/small><\/span>\u00a0signs to fixtures and walls. She suggests a <\/span>DAD\u2019S PICKS<\/small><\/span> sign, as our dad has just donated twenty-five David Baldacci books to our collection. He sits in the corner eating an enormous sandwich while reading Stanley Tucci\u2019s <\/span>What I Ate in One Year.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Mom gets behind the bar with Avery and takes payment. Galen even overheard her asking, \u201cWould you like room for cream?\u201d to a guy who ordered a coffee. Total natural.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

July 7<\/b><\/p>\n

Day off. At the pool, we pass around Mom\u2019s Kindle (font size 3000) to read David Sedaris\u2019s essay on Lily, the purple-haired teen avatar who hosts a podcast on Duolingo, in <\/span>The Land and Its People<\/span><\/i>. Julia and I have been using Duolingo to relearn Spanish, and we both think Lily should ditch her K-pop\u2013obsessed bestie Zari\u2014she seems a little immature.<\/span><\/p>\n

July 10<\/b><\/p>\n

Brandon the physical therapist comes in wearing the same shirt as Galen. It says <\/span>I’M CRYING BECAUSE I LOVE SKATEBOARDING SO MUCH.<\/small>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

July 11<\/b><\/p>\n

Avery, Galen, and I go to the crick with Charlie and Ozge after we close up the shop. To celebrate one month in business, we show them a little local secret called \u201ctaking the autobahn.\u201d The way I like to do it is to wrap a gnawed pool noodle around my waist and jump into the river to be washed away by the current until the riverbed gets shallow enough to scrape against my ass cheeks. Then you walk back up the river, against the current, and do it again until you start bleeding.<\/span><\/p>\n

July 12<\/b><\/p>\n

We sell a brand of skater-owned hot sauce called Satan\u2019s Drain Cleaner, and we\u2019ve been asked if we were a Satanist business. I honestly hadn\u2019t thought about it. Probably not.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
Claire Carusillo is the co-owner of Storyboard, a bookstore, skateshop, and coffee bar in Midway, Utah. Her first novel\u00a0<\/em>The Responsible Party is out from Holt this August.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
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