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Portland is a city of bookstores.
We've spoken of one of the most charming of the smaller indies in town: Backstory Books and Yarn. We knew her when she was over by 60th and Foster and then when she moved over to Hawthorne (a place, it must be said, she's always belonged).
Small, witty, diligently curated, delightful. And then Covid-19 and the advent of stay-at-home and businesses closing because they had to. Now, as a bookstore, such a business has an advantage in as much as you can take orders over the phone or arrange an online alternative. Books aren't perishable and ship very well. But you lose the delicious bookstore browsing experience ... or do you?
Well, I guess it's not a perfect replacement, but what Backstory has done comes close. The proprietrix had taken pictures of the very shelves where the books are arranged and have posted them to Backstory's website. You can tour the shelves at your leisure in picture form and contact Backstory and buy them thusly. She's got every thing up, which is an advantage for a business of this size selling books (when things finally open up, if you ever wanted to browse a cosy bookstore in the old-school way, this place will leave you in bliss). Powell's couldn't do this. Barnes & Noble couldn't do this (does B&N still exist? Does anything anywhere exist anymore?).
This is why we need the small local indie. How much poorer would we be.
We bow, humbled to Backstory's MacGyvering in the shadow of novel coronavirus. We'll be stopping there tomorrow to get a book the Brown Eyed Girl has wanted for a very long time.
Backstory's home page is https://www.backstorybooksandyarn.com/. If you just want to get down to business, start browsing at https://www.backstorybooksandyarn.com/browse. The rest of it should be pretty easy to figure out; there are instructions on each page, and if you haven't figured out how to use that sort of stuff by now you should probably not be allowed in public unescorted (well, after stay-at-home gets lifted, that is).
We've spoken of one of the most charming of the smaller indies in town: Backstory Books and Yarn. We knew her when she was over by 60th and Foster and then when she moved over to Hawthorne (a place, it must be said, she's always belonged).
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| From the Backstory website |
Well, I guess it's not a perfect replacement, but what Backstory has done comes close. The proprietrix had taken pictures of the very shelves where the books are arranged and have posted them to Backstory's website. You can tour the shelves at your leisure in picture form and contact Backstory and buy them thusly. She's got every thing up, which is an advantage for a business of this size selling books (when things finally open up, if you ever wanted to browse a cosy bookstore in the old-school way, this place will leave you in bliss). Powell's couldn't do this. Barnes & Noble couldn't do this (does B&N still exist? Does anything anywhere exist anymore?).
This is why we need the small local indie. How much poorer would we be.
We bow, humbled to Backstory's MacGyvering in the shadow of novel coronavirus. We'll be stopping there tomorrow to get a book the Brown Eyed Girl has wanted for a very long time.
Backstory's home page is https://www.backstorybooksandyarn.com/. If you just want to get down to business, start browsing at https://www.backstorybooksandyarn.com/browse. The rest of it should be pretty easy to figure out; there are instructions on each page, and if you haven't figured out how to use that sort of stuff by now you should probably not be allowed in public unescorted (well, after stay-at-home gets lifted, that is).
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