Samantha Wagner recently visited their new location at 1500 S. Virginia Street and got to interview Ilya Arbatman a regular #heroesofreno who also plays a key role with Laundry to the People.
Here's part of what Samantha wrote after her recent visit: "A modern, clean, and cubic exterior with large square glass windows reveals vivid content inside. When people enter The Radical Cat, they are greeted with vibrant couches, golden overhead lights, soft music, and long shelves of books.
Co-founder Ilya Arbatman walks along the path of books, pointing out genres of cultural studies, feminism, and sexuality alongside books of magic and witchcraft. The bookstore prides itself on inclusivity, community, and human health in all spheres.
“A really big component of our mission is sort of to be a community space,” Arbatman said. “Which means bringing people in here, both during the day and after hours.”
While books cascade along the walls until the very back of the store, the main desk can be seen lined with stickers, totes, apparel, coloring books, pins, patches, and plants trailing down almost every book shelf.
But The Radical Cat isn’t just a bookstore, relevant to its name, it’s also a cat adoption center. In fact, it was a cat lounge before books were introduced to the business.
Rosie Zuckerman first started a cat lounge event at The Holland Project, where she hosted adoptable cats and created galleries around the pop-up.
Zuckerman desired to make this establishment permanent, and with consistent revenue to keep the place active, so that’s when she partnered with Arbatman, Melissa Hafey, and Mike Hafey to start up The Radical Cat.
The bookstore has also started integrating a musical element to the store and as of January, have started selling records Thursday through Sunday.
“I find that the experience of going into a bookstore is really valuable in itself,” Arbatman explained.
“There's really a lot of discovery that happens within a bookstore that just can't really happen in the same way if you are ordering stuff online.”