How You and Me, a popular Chinatown bookstore, rebuilt after a fire

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Lucy Yu wasn’t sure if she had smoke in her lungs or if she was having an anxiety attack. She needed fresh air.

Five days earlier, on July 4, she had run out of her bookstore in Manhattan’s Chinatown as smoke filled the place. The apartment above had caught fire, threatening to destroy everything she had built.

Now Ms. Yu was back, and she had to deal with it. She had organized a team of friends to pack up the books that were not damaged beyond repair and put them into storage. By the time she reached the last bag, she had chest pains.

She went outside and sat on a step by the side door, with her friends comforting her and bringing her water.

His once bustling store, You and Me Books, needed a complete renovation to remove the remnants of mold and smoke. The ceiling was collapsing, the furniture he had built was damaged, and the speaker system he had installed was broken. One bulb was hanging loose, giving off light; he and his friends had to use flashlights in the basement. He had saved a few thousand books, but more than 1,400 were ruined.

The bookstore was Ms. Yu’s first attempt at entrepreneurship, and she thought she had failed. She opened her shop with about $45,000 in December 2021, when the neighborhood was reeling from pandemic-induced shutdowns and a spate of anti-Asian attacks. It soon became a literary hub, hosting first-time authors and holding weekend bar nights where booklovers sipped hard seltzers and wine. The store became profitable within four months.

Now it was all uncertain. Fire officials told him it could take a year to reopen, given the damage.

“That was the first time I cried — I completely lost my composure,” Ms. Yu, who was 28 at the time, said in the first of a series of interviews a few weeks after the fire. “It was such a roller coaster of emotions because I lost something I had put everything into, and I think at the time I didn’t even have the space or the bandwidth to grieve.”

But Ms. Yu didn’t have a chance to dwell on these feelings. New books came out every week, which meant every day was a day when an author could choose another store to talk to or a shopper could turn to Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Without a brick-and-mortar location of her own, and only a small e-commerce operation, she had to get creative. That required seeking financial lifelines and testing new store concepts. It became her life.

It took her 208 days to re-open her shop – a little more than half the expected time. In the process, she discovered that elements of the bookstore would not be exactly the same as they were before, nor did she feel the same. Opening her shop for the second time meant not only reinventing the business, but reinventing herself as well.

She got up and started working.

In the days after the fire, Ms. Yu calculated her losses and expenses: About $60,000 worth of her goods were destroyed. The roof collapse destroyed the heating, cooling and ventilation system, so that also needed to be replaced.

Initially she estimated she would need $80,000 to rebuild, not including paying her nine employees, which she had vowed to do. A friend told her to be realistic and pay about double her estimate. She filed a claim with her insurance company, but she knew she would need the money quickly.

Ms Yu thought about the crowdfunding site GoFundMe, but she was hesitant. A few years ago, she used the platform to raise about $16,000 to start Yu & Me. What would people think when she said she needed their help again?

Her friend and colleague Kazumi Fish reminded her that You and Me means something to others too.

Within a day, more than 2,400 people donated a total of $231,152 to Ms. Yu’s new GoFundMe campaign. (The campaign ultimately raised $369,555.)

Donations came from authors Celeste Ng and Vanessa Chan (who both gave $5,000) and the dating app Coffee Meets Bagel (which raised $2,000). Local bookstores also donated. Plus, many people gave just $10.

Ms. Yu stuck to her revised $150,000 budget, and set aside the additional funds for future emergencies.

Before any renovations could take place, she needed city approval for work, such as installing plumbing and electricity. She worked with her landlord’s architect to get the permits as quickly as possible, and hired a contractor who explained the next steps.

After spending a long day inspecting stores and talking to other fireside entrepreneurs in Chinatown, she would return to her one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment, filled with mismatched furniture, books and records, and binge-watch home-improvement TV shows like “Hack My Home” and “Hoarder House Flippers.”

The show taught her which colors clash and how to make a room feel bigger. Murphy’s bookshelves and nooks can create a homey feel. She made drawings to show her contractor.

“I wish I knew other people who designed places,” Ms. Yu said. “But I thought, ‘This is something I have to do.’ And that’s why HGTV was my resource during this time.”

By fall, construction was in full swing at his sprawling store. Wires hanging from the ceiling were removed and covered with drywall. Floors were ripped up down to the concrete base, and basement walls were torn up and bricks were exposed.

A month after the fire, the Market Line Food Hall, about a mile from her store, offered a basement space for her business. It was only three-quarters the size of her original location but provided a stable address that people could find on Google. While not disclosing the terms, Ms. Yu said she had negotiated a favorable lease because Market Line hoped that Yu & Me would generate foot traffic.

Over Labor Day weekend, Ms. Yu, her employees and her friends worked to replicate You & Me in the temporary space. They assembled Ikea furniture, painted the walls, pulled books out of storage and bought new books from distributors. Ms. Yu spent $3,000 on construction fees and $10,000 on books. On opening day, the 774-square-foot space was packed with well-wishers who told her she had outdone herself by recreating the store’s living room atmosphere.

“Probably later this year I’ll be really good at opening bookstores,” she joked.

But it wasn’t like that. Bookstores rely on casual foot traffic. This store was on the lower level in Market Line, while most of the activity was upstairs, where people grabbed a pizza or beer before heading out. Ms. Yu couldn’t use her liquor or food license for this location, so she couldn’t hold bar nights, which would draw a steady stream of customers.

Though he encouraged customers to get a drink in the food hall and then come back to his store, he said, “It wasn’t very common.” Then he paused and admitted: “It didn’t happen. Probably didn’t happen at all. Not once.”

Revenue fell 40 percent compared to a year earlier.

The staff at You & Me realized they needed to improve. They introduced a “blind date” book concept. They wrapped some books in brown butcher paper, added pithy descriptions like “A generation of women piecing together the fabric of their lives” (actual title: “Mistress of Lonely Hearts”) and priced them a little lower.

A colleague started placing some small books on the shelves with the covers facing out, because he realized that people buy more books when they see the cover rather than the spine.

Eventually, sales began to increase, and Ms Yu vowed to apply some of her lessons there when her original shop reopened.

“I was really angry at myself at first,” she said. “But I guess I can’t expect to adapt and change and start the whole process over again.”

It was a statement that could describe other parts of her life as well. In her constant effort to rebuild—everything was scheduled by the hour—her personal life had been a mess. She hadn’t taken the time to process her feelings about the fire. Sometimes, memories of it would haunt her. Some days, she had to stay away for hours.

“I get really upset thinking about a fire and seeing my business burn down,” she said. “I think I used to work really hard to get on with my path and just think: ‘You’re not sad right now. You’re not stressed. You’re just going to keep moving forward.’ I really thought I could avoid sadness.”

She kept as much control as she could, trimming her shoulder-length hair every few months to a pixie cut just above her ears. (Having short hair also saved her time.)

Ms. Yu’s close friends encouraged her to eat, relax and celebrate, especially when her birthday and the store’s second anniversary approached.

“I can understand how easy it would be to feel alone in this situation because, at the end of the day, she is the sole owner of this store,” Ms. Fish said.

As the Lunar New Year approached, Ms. Yu longed to return to her Chinatown store. She resolved to reopen it by the end of January. Also, in early February, Market Line announced it would close in April.

The days before the reopening were chaotic. On Instagram, You & Me’s page advertised the event with memes and emojis. Behind the scenes, staff scrambled to gather enough books to fill the store.

Ms. Yu had ordered thousands of titles, and asked that they be sent to Market Line because the original store was still under construction. But the carrier, UPS, saw that her Market Line location was empty, and returned the shipment. After ordering them again — this time to You & Me — she fell asleep at the store, waiting for them to arrive.

On the last Sunday in January, Ms. Yu, now 29, opened the door to You & Me. It was dark and raining, but customers came in immediately and steadily.

The first was Henry Rivere, a customer who said he was there to support an Asian-owned business and that he had been following the store’s story on social media. Writer Min Jin Lee came over to hug Ms. Yu, saying she was overwhelmed that the entrepreneur had not given up on her dream. Gloria Moy, an upstairs neighbor who was displaced for months after the fire, was excited to see the diversity of customers visiting Chinatown.

“I can’t describe it,” said Ms. Moy, 63. “Bringing the community together, lifting everyone up, rising from the ashes in time for the new year.”

Friends carrying bouquets made their way through the long line of customers. Pedro Ramirez bought a $265 bouquet and a blue You & Me hat, which he wore as he left the store.

She had low expectations for sales. But a month after opening, her revenue was 50 percent higher than before the fire. Bar nights are back, too.

Ms. Yu is now giving herself more time to read and reflect. Sitting in the red corner, inspired by hours of watching home-improvement stories, she ponders a line by the novelist Tayari Jones at the end of “Silver Sparrow”: “People say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But they’re wrong. What doesn’t kill you doesn’t kill you. That’s all you get.”

She became silent. Then her eyes filled with tears.

“That’s so true,” Ms. Yu said. “There have been times in the past year when I felt like something was dying inside me and I’m still here. It didn’t kill me. It didn’t kill me.”

Creation of audio Sarah Diamond,