There are bookstores where you lose track of time looking for a book, restaurants where you linger over a meal, and wine bars where an evening stretches into another round. Then there is Bad Animal in Santa Cruz, California, where all three experiences come together, often quite unexpectedly. You could walk in looking for a book, stay for a glass of wine, order something to eat and find yourself spending a good part of the afternoon surrounded by stories, both on the shelves and across the table.
Opened in 2019, Bad Animal was conceived as a space that would bring books and wine together, but it has grown into something more layered. It is a restaurant, a natural wine bar and a substantial independent bookshop, with a collection of approximately 12,000 books. The books are not merely decorative additions to a dining space. They are central to its identity, shaping everything from the interiors to the conversations that unfold within it.
For founder Andrew Sivak, the idea was as personal as it was entrepreneurial. He and his partner, who had a background in food and wine and had worked as a chef in San Francisco, were at a point in their lives when they wanted to build something together without leaving Santa Cruz.
“My partner, Jess LoPrete, had a food and wine background and was a chef in San Francisco. And then I was an academic at the university in town and we were both at a point in our lives where our destinies were pulling us apart, but we wanted to do something together and then stay in town. So, we opened this place,” he says.
The division of responsibilities came naturally. His partner took charge of the food and wine program, while Andrew looked after the books. What emerged was not a conventional bookstore with a café attached, or a restaurant with a few shelves thrown in to create an atmosphere. The two worlds were intended to coexist, each with its own character, while contributing to the larger experience.
The books, unsurprisingly, are the first thing that catches your eye. They are everywhere, and the collection is deliberately varied. There are first editions, signed copies and rare books for serious collectors, alongside inexpensive titles that might find their way into the hands of a student or a teenager. The price range is equally striking, from books that sell for around $4 to rare and valuable volumes that can command as much as $40,000. Some are shipped to buyers across the world.
The collection has been built through a combination of buying and trading. Community members bring in books, which Bad Animal exchanges for cash or trade credit. The team also buys at auctions and acquires entire collections when they become available. It is a system that allows the shelves to keep evolving, with each acquisition bringing something new into the space.
The books also inform the visual language of the interiors. Sivak says they make the task of decorating considerably easier, with the collection itself serving as the centrepiece. Around it are poetry broadsides, prints and other artefacts, many of them connected to Santa Cruz. It is an arrangement that gives the place a personality without making it feel overly designed. The objects on the walls have a relationship with the books, while also reflecting something of the town outside.
There is a similar sense of place in the food. The menu changes with the seasons, guided by what is growing locally and what is fresh and available. Santa Cruz, Sivak points out, has a wonderful range of produce grown and developed in the region, and their executive chef Nick Hahn works with that seasonal rhythm.
For anyone visiting for the first time, Sivak has a few recommendations. The gougères and crudos he says, are particularly good and have become something of a favourite. He also suggests choosing one of the seasonal salads, while the fried chicken is worth ordering at the moment. The mousse is another recommendation. It is a menu that does not need to compete with the books for attention, but offers another reason to stay.
The wine program follows its own distinct direction. Bad Animal is a natural wine bar, sourcing bottles primarily from across Western and Eastern Europe, along with producers in California. It adds another dimension to the experience, whether someone has come in for a meal, a book or simply a drink.
Perhaps the most telling account of what Bad Animal means to the town comes from the person who has been selling books there for the past two years. Simon Wang’s relationship with the place began long before he started working behind the shelves. A former film student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, he used to walk around downtown as a student and occasionally visit bookstores. When he first walked into Bad Animal, however, the experience caught him by surprise.
“I used to live in downtown when I was a student, and I would just walk around Santa Cruz. I came in here and I was blown away. I would go to the bookstores and just be like, okay, yeah, it’s cool, it’s awesome, but to see a place like this, it’s like, oh, wow!” he recalls.
It was the kind of place he might have imagined in an idealistic sense, but never quite expected to find himself working in. For him, being surrounded by books, helping people discover them and being part of a place that brings together so many different interests has made the job something of a dream.
His work is not particularly complicated to describe. He sells books, puts stickers on them, prices those being offered for sale and handles the books that come in for purchase. But the interaction with visitors is what makes the experience interesting. Not everyone quite knows what to make of the place when they first walk in.
“Sometimes people ask if it’s a library. Sometimes people don’t get what it is. Sometimes people just walk in for two minutes, realise it’s not for them, and then walk out. But sometimes people are like, ‘Oh my gosh, you guys are doing a great job.’ So, it’s a wide range of things,” he says.
That range of reactions is very much a part of Bad Animal’s charm. It does not fit neatly into one category and visitors are free to make of it what they want. Some may come with a particular book in mind, others might be drawn in by the food and wine, while a few may simply be curious about the unusual combination. The space accommodates all of them, without insisting that they experience it in any particular way.
The bookseller believes the establishment has become an important part of what makes Santa Cruz a town worth visiting. It may not be the only reason to come to the city, but it is certainly a significant one. There is something to be said for a place that offers visitors an experience beyond the usual restaurant or shopping itinerary, and encourages them to spend time doing something as simple as browsing through books.
And if one were to ask whether people should come for the food or the books, his answer is characteristically playful. “Maybe you could eat the food and read the books,” he suggests, before laughing at the idea.
It is a fitting way to describe a place that does not seem particularly interested in making its visitors choose. At Bad Animal, a book does not have to wait until after dinner, and a meal need not interrupt a browsing session. You can arrive for one thing and leave having discovered something else entirely.
That precisely is the appeal of the place. In an age when so many spaces are designed around a single purpose, Bad Animal allows books, food and wine to share the same table. And sometimes, the best way to discover a place is to have no particular plan at all.