DESTINATION: The Face Mags £5 THANET

It’s a tale of two cities – Margate and Ramsgate – for Simon Berkovitch, but the song remains the same in these record shops for bookworms on the Kent coast

To be honest, if it wasn’t for the pandemic, the shop might never have happened at all,” explains Kier Wiater Carnihan, the friendly face of Margate’s Ghost Papa. It’s one of two coastal haunts for book lovers and music fi ends – along with Ramsgate’s June Bug – to have sprung up over the last year. “The fact our lives had already been turned completely upside down made the prospect of a massive move (from London) less intimidating,” he adds. “In normal times, we might not have had the guts to take such a risk.”

Open Wednesday to Sunday, Ghost Papa draws on Keir’s 15 years’ of experience buying and selling records and books in the capital. It’s a spacious treasure trove of pre-loved vinyl, new releases from local heroes, cult literature, graphic novels and so much more.

A visit to Margate in 2020 with his partner Sara provided the inspiration for the coastal venture. Sara was interested in buying somewhere in the area, which she knew well. She’d recently inherited some money after the unexpected passing of her dad and wanted to do something life changing with it. “We were browsing The Margate Book Shop just as they were taking delivery of a washing machine for the owners’ flat upstairs. And we both had the same thought: what if we bought somewhere that had space for a shop downstairs?” 

At the time, Kier was still working at Music and Video Exchange in London as a buyer in the chain’s record and book shops, so had experience aplenty for such a venture.