As Editor in Chief of NYC-based SAVEUR Magazine, Sarah Gray started visiting friends in Greene County in the early 2000s. She soon bought and renovated a great old house in Athens, where she spent her weekends for the next 15 years. Then, a perfect storm of COVID restrictions, rising rural real estate values, and the end of SAVEUR in print, came together to empower Sarah to sell her weekend home at a premium, move upstate full-time, and open UnQuiet as part of the Historic Reed Street Area renaissance by the Hudson River in the Village of Coxsackie.
After growing up in Natchez, Mississippi, Sarah first experienced our Hudson River as a student at Vassar in Poughkeepsie. With her degree in-hand, she headed to the city to work in the publishing industry centered in Manhattan. Prior to SAVEUR, she edited Country Living, Garden Design, Oprah Home, and the Home and Wedding books published by In Style.
A self-described ‘Mad Collector’, Sarah’s passion has always revolved around the process of seeking out the unique, the eclectic, the historic, and the insubordinate. With the sale of her weekend home basically funding her escape from the publishing world, her IRL is now free to ‘do’ all the things she ran stories about. Before she moved out of Athens, she had to find a space for everything she collected. Since ‘the hunt’ was truly what she enjoys, she has no problem selling what she has sourced, restored, and repurposed.
Seeking an Industrial, yet habitable space to begin the next phase of her business life, she was delighted when the former Fire House and Jail building at 47 River Street in Coxsackie became available. The revitalization of the neighborhood was really taking hold with the streets leading to the riverfront becoming a retail destination with shops like Pilot House Paper, Mansion + Reed General Store, Shipwrecked, and The Reed Street Bottle Shop, not to mention the soon to open James Newbury Hotel & The Wire event center.
She opened her doors just prior to the holiday season in 2021 to a great start, but when the winter snows fell en masse, retail foot traffic fell off. Sarah’s places had always been a de facto gathering spot for cocktails and conversation, and the bar she had built in what used to be a jail consistently filled with friends, visitors, and local proprietors in the evening. She quickly realized she was essentially running a non-profit bar. The pursuit of libations, it seems, is not impeded by inclement weather. Hence, Ravish Liquors – a cozy speak-easy with an entrance on New Street, will be serving potent potables under its NYS Liquor License.
Aside from antiques, re-upholstered pieces, and collectables, Sarah is constantly adding specialty soft-goods, wearables and accessories to bolster her UnQuiet brand, which the entrepreneur in her envisions selling at national retail outlets in the not-so-distant future.
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Topics: Success Stories
