Finding My Magazine Oasis

Full disclosure: I was born before the Internet. Before smartphones. Before 5700 channels and nothing on. Yea, I’m a baby boomer. Though I like to think of myself as a “baby bloomer.” My motto, “grow, but never grow up.”

So before I doomscrolled Twitter, fell down Google search rabbit holes, or obsessed over Instagram, I surfed magazine stands. My favorite growing up was at the now-extinct Readmore Bookstore in Richmond, Indiana. If a magazine existed, Readmore carried it. I also spent a good deal of my 30s and 40s scouring magazine aisles of Books & Co. in Dayton, Ohio, Joseph-Beth Books in Dayton, Ohio, and Border’s, my favorite, now-defunct chain bookstore. To this day (or at least pre-pandemic) I seek out independent bookstores on my travels around the country and make their magazine aisles my first stop. Kramer’s Books in DC has been a favorites every time I’m in the nation’s capital.

So, it was with much joy and nostalgia that on a recent distanced and masked grocery shopping trip to Woodman’s Market in Carpentersville, Illinois, I discovered the store’s expansive magazine aisle. I’m not sure there are too many places these days where I could find the latest issues of Bass Player Magazine, Illinois Outdoors, CarToons, and the New Yorker, all in one place. And those are just a few of the hundreds of titles featured at Woodman’s. After 30 minutes of glorious browsing, I came away with the latest issue of Mojo Magazine featuring the White Stripes on the cover and the music issue of the Oxford American. I could have easily brought home a dozen other interesting titles.

Bookstores, magazine aisles, and magazines themselves may become extinct in my lifetime. At the very least, choices, locations, and access will continue to narrow. As someone who grew up enthralled and entertained by magazines, it makes me sad. I feel the loss. But until the day they’re gone, I’ll continue to seek out those few remaining vibrant magazine aisles. See you at Woodman’s.