Two brothers open a business that Kansas City, Kansas, hasn’t seen in decades
It’s not clear, exactly, how long it’s been since an independent bookstore opened in Wyandotte County.
There was The Hub, a Black-owned bookstore in Quindaro that opened in 1965 and closed in 1975. A 1988 city directory lists several locations of Bee’s Books, a used shop. But most likely it was The Bookstore, at 8149 State Ave., which opened in the 1980s as a franchise location of Fairway’s Rainy Day Books and closed in the early 2000s.
Into this tome-deficient environment has stepped Flagship Books, a quiet little shop in the heart of Strawberry Hill, at 600 Ohio Ave. Brothers Joel and Ty Melgren opened the place in January after a nine-month stint last year running Flagship out of a 120-square-foot shipping container in North Kansas City’s Iron District.
“It was a test-run for us, to see if we liked running a bookstore and if people liked what we put on the shelves,” Joel Melgren said. “It led us to think we could step up to an actual storefront — a place that can fit more than five people at one time.”
The Melgrens didn’t have to look far for a new address. The new Flagship Books is around the block from the Strawberry Hill home they have shared since Ty moved back to the Midwest at the beginning of the pandemic. (He had been teaching English as a second language in Asia for several years before.) Joel works just up Sixth Street at Local Agent, a real-estate office.
“KCK is one of the bigger cities we know of that doesn’t have an independent bookstore,” Joel said. “Living here, it seemed like a space we could fill for the community.”
Though the new location is four times the size of the original Flagship space, it’s still pretty small, about 550 square feet. New titles make up about 20% of the books on offer; Joel said they’re trying to grow the New section, adding that they’ll special-order any title a customer is looking for. They also monitor #BookTok, a TikTok community that for the last few years has regularly sent sales of specific books into the stratosphere.
Alongside shelves filled with literary fiction and contemporary nonfiction, you’ll find a few niche sub-genres at Flagship. Graphic novels, progressive religion, and sci-fi by writers of color like N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor.
“I think there’s a good mix of representation in our selection,” Joel said. “We also have a section of Spanish books that we are working on growing for our Spanish-speaking customers and for people who want to improve their Spanish.”
The Melgrens are still experimenting with the hours of the shop. For the time being, it’s noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday. They’re closed Monday and Tuesday, but may expand their hours come summertime.
In the meantime, they’re pleased to be part of a little artistic boomlet happening in and around Strawberry Hill, which also includes newcomers like Secret Handshake Studios, Kinship Cafe, Epic Arts, and, soon, Manor Records.
“It’s been cool to meet a lot of our neighbors through the shop,” Joel said. “Really, we’re just trying to promote reading in the neighborhood. And it seems like there’s a lot of support for that here so far.”
