Storyboard — a cafe, bookshop and skateshop — opens this month in Midway

Claire Carusillo opens the door to her new business, Storyboard — a one-stop shop for book, coffee and skateboard enthusiasts of all kinds — just walking distance from her home on Main Street in Midway. 

She slides from the coffee shop area, about the size of a foyer with mauve walls and a coffee bar on one side of a slim hallway, through an open doorway to the skateshop section. It’s a smooth transition to the larger, brightly painted blue room with high ceilings and skater decor, decks with designs of all kinds lining the far wall.

The skateboard side of her partner in business, and in life, is Galen DeKemper’s domain. The couple has long dreamed of opening their own business. 

“You walk in here, get yourself a little coffee. Then, maybe while you’re waiting, you’re going … in here,” Carusillo said. “Then you’re going to walk over to Galen, and I know it’s a little bit intimidating because you’re like, what do I do now?”

She plucks a skateboard off the wall. The bottom is painted with vibrant purple graphics. Then, DeKemper talks through the process of building a skateboard. First, choose the board. Next, the trucks and hardware to help turn and glide. Then, matching wheels. 

“You can pick your wheels and their size and softness,” DeKemper explained. “The bigger ones are better for rougher terrain. Some of the smaller, harder ones are more for skate parks.”

DeKemper said an entire board can be put together in the shop the same day. The idea was to create an environment for skateboarders across the Wasatch Back to come and hang out in the store. 

With a coffee in hand and a skateboard being put together, Carusillo said that’s the time to visit the bookstore. One doorway over, visitors transition spaces from electric blue to bright pinkish red. DeKemper and Carusillo painted and stained every surface of the shop themselves. 

The bookshop side of Storyboard belongs equally to Carusillo and DeKemper. The pair are writers and both freelance for The Park Record and The Wasatch Record. Carusillo is also an author with her first book, “The Responsible Party,” set for an August release.

The western room of the shop — which was once Midway’s Fill’er Up station — is lined with books. The selection reflects the couple’s personal taste in literature: contemporary fiction. 

But that’s not all there is.

The couple has thrifted books for years in anticipation of opening Storyboard. There’s a vast selection of used books from western novels to Utah-centric stories, classic literature to dystopian fiction, nonfiction to children’s books and even a Spanish-language section. Plus, vintage maps and historic novels, zines and magazines, trinkets and more. 

“If you’re not going to buy a book, we like this to just become a living room of sorts,” Carusillo said, sitting down in a cow-print armchair in the center of the space. 

The garage-style windows open in summer, offering a fresh breeze and sunshine for those lounging on the window-side bar seats.

There’s space for browsing, for relaxing and for community. That’s exactly the vibe Carusillo and DeKemper wanted to curate for their store.

For Carusillo, Storyboard is a space to connect with fellow locals in Midway. She and DeKemper have ensured the local vibe is represented, down to the to-go refrigerator stocked with Hidden Peaks Provisions snacks and sandwiches. 

Carusillo hopes visitors and tourists will stop by, of course. But she also hopes Storyboard will become a space for the Midway and Heber City communities. 

DeKemper hopes Storyboard will be able to connect and bring together the skate community in the Wasatch Back. Skate shops, in addition to skate parks, are places he has gone to meet like-minded individuals. 

“What I’m truly hoping is that … if you have an hour or two that you need to spend in a place, we want this to be that,” Carusillo said.

The couple has known they wanted to open Storyboard for nearly half a decade. They moved to Utah with the intention of opening their shop someday. They settled in Midway and found the Fill’er Up building for sale — a place they considered to be a perfect location. 

Carusillo said that having a day-to-day job is a necessity for her and DeKemper, despite being writers.

“Ann Patchett is an author who also has a bookstore, and that always seemed like the most ideal thing ever for a writer who has a day job,” Carusillo said. 

Then, DeKemper — a decades-long skater — taught Carusillo how to skateboard. The pair cruises through the streets and cul-de-sacs of the Wasatch Back, finding areas to glide around with their dog, Mars.

It wasn’t long before the idea of a bookshop and a skateshop merged.

“We started making up a fake skate brand because I started making these stickers that said ‘I’m crying because I love skateboarding so much,’” Carusillo said. “We kind of came here with a cockamamie plan.”

Their plan came to fruition. That tagline, and the couple’s official Storyboard logo, now decorate the bottoms of various skateboards in-store. Carusillo said the pair got lucky in some ways that Midway is now booming with tourism, and the shop will open at the peak of the summer season this month. 

There’s room to grow for Storyboard.

DeKemper said he and Carusillo plan to clean up a side patio space for outdoor lounging and reading. There are plenty of applications, they said, from hopefuls looking to work at the shop. But, for now, it’ll just be DeKemper, Carusillo and a barista or two. 

Coffee, they said, is one thing in the shop they are not experts on. But that’s where help comes into play. 

As DeKemper and Carusillo unpack the last of their merchandise and organize the remainder of the shop, the pair said they are excited for what the future holds.