The Bedford Sportsman: Closing Time

The tangle of roadways that connect Manhattan with the rest of the world has always been a mystery to me. I suppose it’s a maze to everyone save for those who grew up in the Gotham shadows. Not getting lost might have been one of the biggest reasons I enjoyed heading to 25 Adams Street in Bedford Hills, New York. From Boston I’d take 91 to 15 to 104 to 172 to 22 and I’d be a chip shot away. I never got frustrated fighting traffic, and I might almost say that the drive was fun.

The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was a gem of a fly fishing and wingshooting shop called The Bedford Sportsman. A lot of folks told me that the town in my favorite movie, It’s A Wonderful Life, was based on life in Bedford Hills. Another town further upstate, Seneca Falls, New York, also claims that right. Regardless, I always planned my visits to Bedford around Christmas.

Back then I was an Orvis road dog and spent more time hawking fly fishing and wingshooting gear, teaching a few dozen schools per year, and writing than I did at home. I had around 60 shops in my territory, with new ones opening all the time. They were the result of the striped bass conservation success story combined with a war chest full of mad cash made in the in the Go Go 80’s.

Those new shops joined ones that had been around for such a long time that they had patterned ceilings made from tin. There was the Housatonic Meadows Fly Shop with cabins for lodging, a diner that opened early for breakfast, and a garage in case your Mercury Eight broke down. The Opechee Trading Company in Laconia, NH and Nelson’s Bait and Tackle in Provincetown, MA opened their doors around that same time, and though those shops from the late 1940s were dusty and musty, they were more fun than the high-volume suburban shops and their drop ceilings and fluorescent, tubular lights. Old fly shops felt as comfortable as home.

Smart fellas picked this location, for it had all of a retailer’s wish-list dreams. A commuter rail deposited well-heeled sportsmen at the Metro North stop a short 75 yards away. There was a huge parking lot. There was regular foot traffic of potential customers who shopped or dined in town, and there was solid freshwater and excellent saltwater fishing nearby. In the spring, a double haul landed you in the Catskills while a roll cast from your long rod landed your fly in the Long Island Sound brine.

When spring became summer, Bedford Sportsman customers traded their nights at the Antrim Lodge for a week on the Gaspe, the Restigouche or the Matapedia. After Labor Day, the time when white pants were swapped for woolens, they traded rods for shotguns. Hunting season was the time to cut loose the dogs and harvest Ruffed grouse, woodcock, pheasant, mallards, woodies and honkers. The game provided Bedford Sportsman customers with fine table fare, but they also supplied a winter’s worth of feathers for tying. Come spring there’d be boxes full of classic Catskill-style dries, wets, nymphs and streamers.

Just after the Summer of Love, the back-to-the-land counter-culture movement included a migration of people who traded city life for the country. Folks wanted to live a simple, self-reliant life, and three ex-Wall Streeters, Harry Whitman, Larry Kennedy Jr., and his brother-in-law Bill Gutelius, followed suit. Back then, suburban Westchester County still had a tremendous amount of open land that stretched from the horsey backcountry Greenwich all the way to Katonah, New York, and there were lots of fishing and hunting opportunities nearby. What better way to combine business with pleasure than to open a shop where they could talk about fly rods and bird dogs all day?

The trinity hatched their plan, and they’d be a small version of the sporting giant, the original Abercrombie & Fitch. A&F might have sold gear to Teddy Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway, the Field and Stream columnist Corey Ford, aviator Charles Lindberg, Clark Gable and President John F. Kennedy, but this smaller, boutique model would be infinitely more nimble. They sourced unique products from small companies as most of the products we see in today’s shops weren’t even made. Umpqua Feather Merchants got their start in 1972, Scott Fly Rods in 1974, Sage Fly Rods in 1980, Simms waders in 1980, Redington in 1992, you get the picture. Orvis had a wholesale network, so did Cortland, and the fellas started there.

“Larry Kennedy wanted to open just before Christmas 1970,” said Charles George, the last owner of the Sportsman. “He hooked up a trailer to his Datsun pickup, drove to Vermont to meet Leigh Perkins, and loaded the trailer full of tackle, dog beds, men’s shooting products, clothing and gifts. After filling up the store they did the same thing with Cortland. They brought in other brands like Converse waders and hippers, Wheatley fly boxes, Hardy reels, and more. Sales were outrageous, new customers became regular customers, and they were off to a great start.

“The guys knew a lot about fishing and hunting but were new to retail. A few months later, Leigh Perkins visited the shop to see how things were going. Somehow, a lot of Cortland Rods wound up in the Orvis rack. Leigh called that out in a good-natured way, renamed them the ‘Bad Boys of Bedford,’ and took them out for dinner and drinks. They celebrated their mutual success, but that name always stuck. Whenever we even thought about coloring outside of the lines Harry would call us the Bad Boys of Bedford and reel us back in.”

The shop was small by today’s standards. There was 720 square feet of basement storage, and 1100 square feet for retail space. Local fly tiers filled the bins with Quill Gordons, Hendricksons, and Light Cahills, hunters filled fly tying sections with grouse feathers, deer and pheasant tails and other things. The size of the shop made it easy to keep expenses in check, and when the owners weren’t fishing they reinvested profits that enabled them to grow.

Charles George entered the scene in the early 90s. His father and Kennedy were friends and parishioners at St. Patrick’s Church. One year, Larry invited them all to go tarpon fishing at St. Simon’s Island in Georgia, and Charles was on that trip. “I loved to fish, but I didn’t get a chance to go as often as I liked,” he said. “I worked at IDS Financial Services, was studying for my Series 7, but I hated my job. Everyone was going to the Keys or Boca Grande for tarpon, but here we were on Larry’s boat hooking up Georgia fish over 110 pounds. About a week after that trip, I quit my job and went to work at the Sportsman. I moved in upstairs, too.”

One conversation with Charles and you’ll know that he’s a mover and shaker. He needed to be because there was a whole lot of new competition when he took over. Charles added freshwater fly-casting classes in the spring, then fleshed them and added saltwater schools in the summer. Local was key, so he rented a van and offered customers a ‘walk and wade’ trip that showed them local fishing spots. On some days there would be 30 people in the van, and the attitude was always upbeat. “It was like a high school sports team driving around for an away game,” he said. “Those customers had so much fun that we added winter fly tying, guest speakers, lodge owners presenting slide shows from far away, travel, you name it. Customer appreciation days were bar-be-cues in front of the store, and we’d invite people walking by that we didn’t even know. We were part of the community, and the community was loyal to us and faithful. Our business grew way before A River Runs Through It came out, and we continued going strong long after the sizzle ended.”

The Bedford Sportsman lured another full timer from an otherwise promising music career. In high school, Todd Cronin was a left-handed quarterback and drummer who went on to form a cutting edge ‘80s and 90s indie rock band named Monsterland. They signed a deal with Atlantic records, and their fellow artists included some bands you might recognize: Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and the Stone Temple Pilots, among others. After an MTV debut and touring, Cronin worked for a couple of Big Apple recording labels. One day he stopped into the Sportsman and the next thing you know he, like the others, scrapped a perfectly good career to become Todd from the Shop. Others joined the family, and when they did they got a nickname, too. There was Mad Max, Tony the Woo, Big Dave and Big John, and many others.

Even though they had famous customers like David Letterman, players with the New York Yankees, sporting sons of politicians, and hot actresses looking for Brad Pitt, the business model changed. “It’s hard enough running a business that’s always ‘too something,’” Charles said. “Every year is either too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, too early or too late. Add to that an increase in box stores, large fly stores, ecommerce, and manufacturers going consumer direct and we took lots of hits. Outlets and discounters sold the same product we had in our shop for less than we paid for it. We ran through a decade of that, but we were getting tired of dealing with it when the pandemic hit. The Sportsman was not an essential business, so we couldn’t be open. To survive, we did creative things and sold product in our parking lot under a tent. Towards the end we weren’t making any money, and the choice to close after just over 50 years wasn’t difficult at all. It was sort of a relief.”

The industry joke is true.
Q: How do you make a million bucks in the fly-fishing industry?
A: Start with 2 million.

Harry Whitman was known for his keen observations on the human condition. When things got tough he said ‘they’ll miss us when we’re gone.’ He’s right, for we’re conditioned to old brands and stores being around for forever. Somehow, we’re shocked when they close for good. Maybe if we bought more gear from them instead of online, maybe if we introduced a few new anglers to the sport they’d be around, we all say the same things. But if the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, then the second-best time to plant a tree is now. Fishing season is coming up, so maybe it’s time to support your local dealer.

Harry Whitman was right, for I miss all of those old shops and the friends I made there. And of them all, I probably miss The Bedford Sportsman the most. Evidently, I’m not the only one.