The City Reader

Dear Liza,

This is Auntie Bridgett’s birthday week, so we headed down to her favorite frozen yogurt shop, Eb and Bean. Eb and Bean is in a larger building called D Street Village that includes a taco shop and Bollywood Theater on the bottom floor and offices upstairs.

It also includes a wonderful magazine stand, which has been hiding in plain site in the front hallway! The City Reader has been here for ten years, and we have been walking right past it for five. It never registered as a shop. Closed up, it just looks like cupboards.

But today it was open and Karen, the owner and sole employee, was tending shop and showed us all her lovely things.

She carries about 150 different magazines, she says. She only has room for a few copies of each, but the publishers and magazines she orders from don’t have an order minimum.

Her magazines are wonderful. Quality paper, artwork, and writing. She has some nationally popular magazines, like Architectural Digest, and many others that I haven’t heard of.

Some of her magazines are local. The Nib, which we own several issues of, is mostly political satire in graphic novel form. It is published right here in Portland. We have even gone to their release parties! Matt Bors, the main brains behind it, has decided to move on, so there will be no more. By stumbling on The City Reader today, we were able to buy the last issue of this smart, funny magazine.

Another local magazine is Kitchen Table, all about food and drink. The content is delightfully specific to this area and the graphic design is charming.

In discovering The City Reader and meeting Karen, I feel like I have a new favorite place tucked inside an old one. Frozen Yogurt AND magazines! What’s not to like?

Love,

Grandma Judy