[pdx_life] Powell's Travel Store to Close

This just in from the business pages of todays Oregonian: citing declining sales in travel books, Powell's Travel Store, located in Pioneer Courthouse Square, is slated for the axe.

I don't know if they're going to have any clearance events or such, but the date for winding up has been set for 31 January 2005.

It will be missed. Not that I'm any sort of traveler, but I am crazy mad about maps, especially city maps, and Powell's has been the best source, not just for local maps but also for city maps across the USA as well as around the world. Little quirky maps by local publishers, of cities I couldn't have gotten any other way. I hold out hope that they will expand the travel section at Burnside, but we shall see.

Have gotten my best German maps there as well. Always a pleasant place for a browse. I shall miss it. For a long time you could get backstocked maps of the incorporated city of Rajneeshpuram that the State of Oregon put out while it was an unchallenged city (I have one, naturlich, but I didn't get it from there.

I don't write often about my abiding love of maps or my rather large collection that would be simply wrong for anyone who doesn't love maps. Way too distracted. But that's a subject for the future.