For Rochester independent bookshop owner Jess Gale ’04, community is essential to both the journey and the destination.
Sirens, female beings of Greek mythology who sing hypnotic songs that lure sailors to their deaths, first appear in Homer’s Odyssey. But at their most fundamental interpretation, sirens are heralds, beckoning all who hear them to come closer, to come home.
For Jess Gale ’04, who owns Rochester’s The Siren and the Sea: Books and Coffee, the name of her shop was clear in its intent. “I liked the idea of the sirens calling people in,” she says, adding that she was drawn to reframing the image of a siren “from an evil woman to a powerful figure with more feminist, progressive values. If we don’t reclaim these things, who will, you know?”
Home and back again
Gale arrived at the University of Rochester from a small town in the Upper Peninsula in northern Michigan, along Lake Superior. “It was a very rural community. I think the largest city was something like five hours away, and so I was itching to get out,” she recalls. “And Rochester was pretty far away. I just remember it opened my world because it was a larger metro area and very diverse. And that was super exciting.”
After a few months of settling in, Gale buckled down, spending much of her time in the libraries. (Fun note: URochester is where Gale first read The Odyssey, as part of a classics course.) She was also a member of the rowing club—not yet a varsity sport—for three years and would rise early to practice on the Genesee River.
During her senior year, Gale joined friends who were starting an off-campus, eco-conscious, cooperative living space, establishing what would become the prevailing ethos of her personal and professional life: finding and embracing community.
“I liked the idea of the sirens calling people in.”
After graduating in 2004 with an anthropology major and a Latin minor, Gale spent a year in Philadelphia working with AmeriCorps, among other odd jobs. Her friends, many of whom had enrolled in URochester’s Take 5 Scholars Program and were still in the self-named Eco-House, encouraged her to move back (for the first time; more on that later). She took their advice, piecing together part-time jobs at Abundance, a local food co-op, The Little Theatre, and elsewhere, reacquainting herself with the city as she commuted by bike.
A community awaits
Around 2007, Gale reached out to her old anthropology professors to see if there was any work she could do. A conversation with Nancy Chin, now professor emeritus, led to a research assistant position studying the effectiveness of smoking-cessation helplines, which led to a study on breastfeeding under another professor emeritus, Ann Dozier.
“That work was really interesting to me,” Gale says. “I was going into WIC (the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) clinics all over the city and interviewing mothers about their experiences breastfeeding.”
Gale left Rochester for some time after this, pursuing an MFA in film at American University, ultimately settling down in Jacksonville, Illinois, where, married with a child, she began working part-time in administrative roles at Illinois College in the art, theater, and music departments. “And then,” she says, “an independent bookstore on the town square came up for sale.” Gale bought Our Town Books in 2018 and immediately felt at home among its book-loving community.
In 2023, the desire to live in a more diverse and liberal region beckoned once again, and Rochester—still home to close friends from her URochester days—was it. Gale returned with her family (a now-ex-husband and an eight-year-old), a love of bookselling, and the celebration of a third space in tow.
“It took forever to find a location,” notes Gale. She toured various properties before finding a building in Rochester’s South Wedge, which she bought outright. After much effort that included painting the ceilings and persuading some of her beloved former staff from Illinois to join her in Rochester, The Siren and the Sea opened in October 2025.
Poetry in motion
With its proximity to the Mt. Hope neighborhood and downtown Rochester, the South Wedge—which borders the north end of URochester’s River Campus—was, to Gale, a crucial location. It’s close to a bus stop and stands firmly in the mix of several service-forward organizations, such as a local food pantry, a fitness center for veterans, and a clinic offering healthcare to low-income individuals.
“There are so many community needs being met in this spot,” she says. “Employees from the other businesses will stop in, which helps us get to know them, as well as the people using those services.”
The store markets itself as general interest, but after spending even a short time within its walls, one thing is evident: Art, inclusivity, and critical thinking are central to everything from book curation to the café menu. “It’s important to me that we offer a place where people can feel at home,” says Gale, “where they can connect and explore ideas.”
To wit, each month, the store hosts an eclectic array of groups, activities, and events. Recent offerings include a craft rave, a silent reading night, author talks and book signings, a screening as part of an LGBTQ+ Latino film series, a romantasy book club, and participation in a local independent bookstore crawl. The store caps most events at 20 people, shares Gale, and they’re almost always filled.
“There are so many community needs being met in this spot.”
There’s an inherent warmth to the store—a goal of Gale’s—with its gentle ivy trailing over the coffee bar and its charmingly mismatched tables and chairs, reflecting the enticement of its literary moniker. Running into someone you know (as I did on several visits) while browsing the ample books and gifts displays seems like all but inevitable. And Gale can’t help but mention several customers by name, many of whom have, in this short time, become regulars.
It’s poetry befitting of Homer, then, to reclaim the siren by establishing a spot that calls people in from wherever they might be. It may seem like luck or happenstance that it happened in the very same city where she first found a sense of community, but for Gale, Rochester is the exact right place to be. “This is above and beyond what I could have imagined.”
