Iconic Harvard Square Newsstand May Close

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: Editor&Publisher/AP

The iconic Harvard Square newsstand, Out of Town News, could soon close as it struggles along with the rest of the newspaper business.

Laura Samuels of Hudson News, which runs the kiosk, said the company just received a 60-day lease extension. That gives the city of Cambridge until the end of January to find a new tenant or reach a deal with Hudson.

Samuels said Out of Town News is not profitable and no longer fits the company's business model, which focuses on airports. But she said there was still a chance Hudson will reach a new contract to run the stand.

The kiosk, known for having a wide selection of daily and international papers, is on the national register of historic buildings.

Read more: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003894186

[Bicoastal]

1. "A...news...stand?"

What's that? Is there free Wifi so I can check all my newsblogs for free?"

[Gormy Cuss]

2. Out of town was an amazing place.

Pre-internet era it was the closest thing to it -- newspapers from around the world as well as many, many magazines, yet it's tiny enough to have survived on a thin island for years. I suppose it's a dinosaur now (hasn't stock out of town newspapers in several years) but it would nice to preserve the building in its current location for some purpose.

[Submariner]

3. I used to hang there as a young teenager and watch the Beatniks

going to the Expresso houses to listen to bongo's and poetry readings. A few years later it was a good place to score weed with the Hippies that took over. When I got out of the Navy, we would go there to meet up with the anti-war rallies supporting Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

I'll miss it if it goes. It would sorta be like the Old Man of the Mountain collapse in NH a few years back. When it's gone, it's gone.

[DeepModem Mom]

8. Thanks for the photo, Gormy Cuss! nt

[bluecollarcharlie]

4. Let 'em fail!!

They can get jump start on all the American jobs that are gonna be dumped by all the other businesses we let fail.
Maybe a foreign company can come in and take it over and run it better.

[JVS]

5. Can't they sell enough cheap liquor to keep afloat?

[Sydnie]

6. The story of Out Of Town News

I worked there for 4 years in the early 80's. It was the crossroads of many lives during it's heyday.

It was owned and run by two brothers. When I worked there, they were redoing the subway station that is right under the building and at the time, it was a temporary trailer, not the building that it is housed in right now. We had magazines and newspapers from all over the world available for sale and we had many, many well known customers. (I once told off William Buckley in the store and enjoyed every minute of it) As the subway project was continuing, they would often have to move the building to accommodate the space needed by the work crews. We would go down to the square at 3 in the morning, watch them lift the building with a crane, place it in it's new location (always on the same island in the middle of the road), reconnect the power and we were open for business by 6:30 that same morning. It wasn't just the magazines and newspapers that kept the place in business though. There was also a sister company housed in the same building called Out Of Town Ticket Agency. They were often able to get tickets to things that no one else could get tickets for and of course, opening day of ticket sales for many events always meant a packed house for many hours on those days.

The Cohen Brothers had their fingers in many other businesses as well. They owned a bookstore just a few blocks from the news stand which acted as the receiving area for the monumental numbers of magazines we sold every week. After all, when you are a one room trailer with two businesses housed there, there wasn't any room for back stock on site.

They also had a side business of the first chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich which they called Chipwiches (long before there was a similar product available anywhere else), that we sold during the warm months from a freezer in front of the trailer. They had a soda vending machine outside that talked to you as you put your money in and waited for your selection to drop down. We carried benches into the subways and sold morning newspapers there long before there were any kiosk's built in any subway stations in the area and they did the same thing on street corners all over the city as was done by the Brothers when they were young (and got their start in the business as kids doing corner hawking). They leveraged as much as they could to stay afloat. Sometimes stepping on a few toes and over a few lines too. They eventually took themselves down by not paying the lottery for tickets that they received and sold in the store. They took themselves down with shady deals. Eventually the business was sold off to the current owner and the feeling and spirit of the place left with the Cohen Brothers. It was not the same after that.

The building that they are housed in now has as story all it's own. When they first began the subway project this was the original subway entrance building and had been there for goodness knows how many years. The Cohen Brothers had made a deal with Cambridge to save the building and reoccupy it once the subway project was completed since they were not planning on reusing the building for the subway. They removed the building and stored it for years while construction was taking place. Once the construction was complete they brought the building back and converted it to house the current Out Of Town as it stands today. The building is historic and I can't imagine that the city of Cambridge will let the building go completely.

They kept this business running by finding a niche that their competitors (as close as right across the street mind you) was not servicing and ran with it. It was a meeting place that everyone could find (even out of town visitors could find it) and a place where regular people could mingle with celebrities if they were there at just the right time.

I was sorry to see it change hands when the Cohen's lost it. It was never the same after that. The wealth of newspapers that they carried from all over the world ended with them and the few international publications that they kept after that could be picked up at many other outlets by that time. When they replaced the old, bueat up postcard spinners with glass shelves of tourist trinkets, there wasn't much left that made it special anymore.

I'll be sorry to see them go. I have many wonderful memories of my years there.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. That is fascinating, Sydnie! Thank you so much for sharing your insider view!

I do hope that, at least, the structure will remain.

[SpiralHawk]

14. Used to take the bus in from Watertown

Walk over to Out of Town to stock up on some reading, then saunter down to Bartley's Burger Cottage for a Swiss-Mushroom burger, a coke, and a good read !

[Gormy Cuss]

9. I remember the trailer days.

Harvard Square was a crazy mess in those years. I had forgotten about Out of Town tickets but yes, that was a huge deal. Which bookstore did the Cohens own?

I also agree with you that the place lost its charm after Hudson took over.

[DeepModem Mom]

10. And Barnes&Noble took over the Coop. I tell my children sometimes...

in my more pessimistic moments: "Everything changes -- usually not for the better."

[Gormy Cuss]

11. The most striking thing about the retail mix until the '90s was the number of bookstores.

It was a reader's paradise and the Coop bookstore was one of the best.

The Coop was on everyone's list of must stops, not just because of the store contents but because of that rare commodity in Harvard Square -- a public restroom. :D

[bicentennial_baby]

13. Sniffa used to work at the Coop

:D

[Sydnie]

16. A Public Restroom!!!

Imagine, in that little trailer, we had no restroom. We made deals with local resturaunts to allow us to use theirs. We were regular fixtures in the Wursthouse! Once they booted us out of their places, we had to cross the street and go into the offices for the news stand to use the restroom there.

There was alway something going on in the Square!

[Sydnie]

15. Brattle Books

on the corner of Brattle Street just down at the end of Brattle Street from the Harvard Square Cinema. I never spent much time in the book store itself, but I spent quite a bit of time in the basement doing the receiving and shipping of the magazines and papers to the news stand.

I loved it when the turned the building so that it faced the new subway opening. You never missed a face coming and going out of that station and you saw everybody that way.

Do you remember when there was a new ticker on the building across from the news stand? I can remember being there the day Reagan was shot, reading the ticker while it was hitting the news. I also remember reading it when Lennon was shot.

I watched so much of life from that little island in the street!

[Gormy Cuss]

19. Huh! Never knew there was a connection between Brattle Books and OTN

I think I haunted every bookstore and cheap restaurant back then (remember Sunflower Cafe, Souper Salad, the free cheese and crackers at Grendel's during happy hour, the GREAT Chinese restaurants, the Patisserie Francaise, and the brunch at 33 Dunster on Sunday morning?)

I remember the ticker in the square too. Harvard Square was a great place to hang out.

[Vogon_Glory]

12. Rats! I'll Miss It!

I'll miss that newsstand. I often shopped there when I was a student visiting Cambridge a couple of decades ago, and they continued to carry magazines and newspapers that nobody else seemed to bother to stock as late as last month, when I last visited it.:-(

[-..__...]

17. I knew for certain that Harvard Square had reached the point of no return

when Elsies closed, followed by the Tasty and now the Out of Town newstand.

One of my earliest recollections of Harvard Square and Out of Town was back in the late 60's.

Myself and a few buddies had cut school one day and took the T (back when it was the MTA), there, and just as we stepped out of the station onto the street, a full blown melee was in progress complete with hippies, cops and tear gas; we ducked into the news stand to watch the festivities.

[Blue_in_Mass]

18. Maybe I won't miss it.

It is a smelly bum magnet, and it blocks pedestrian traffic.

on edit, some clarifying remarks:

I live in Boston, and this town has a serious problem with over-aggressive bums. They frequently rob businesses, attack pedestrians, and otherwise harass people that would like nothing better than to just go about their lives. I understand the sentimental value attached to this kiosk, but I've been attacked (yes, attacked, not just harassed) by these undesirable one too many time to not see it in this light.