It's unlikely that anyone who spent a significant amount of time hanging around the South Street commercial corridor of the 1970s will have forgotten about
Paper Moon, which served as both an indoor newsstand and a countercultural institution during its heyday. While news of the shop's Thanksgiving weekend reopening at 520 South 4th Street by its original owner, Bill Curry, came as a welcome surprise to the shop's former customers, it has also been considered a touch curious, what with the unfortunate economic state of the print publishing world today (not to mention that of the retail industry in general).
"This all came about because we had a 40th reunion of the people that had the
[South Street] Renaissance," explains Curry, who also owns the nearby
Copabanana restaurant, referring to the economic revival of the area that took place during the late 1960s and early 70s.
At the reunion, which happened at Isaiah Zagar's
Magic Gardens last October, someone suggested to Curry that he reopen the old shop. And since Curry is currently in the process of transferring the management of Copabanana to his nephew, he decided to give it a go.
As Curry points out, though, "magazines are only about 20 percent of my business." Paper Moon also stocks obscure greeting cards, a selection of high-end candies and snacks, and a number of cookbooks and New York Times-bestsellers that can even be rented, library-style, for $3 a week.
Curry has a wide range of future plans for the shop, including wireless Internet access and printing capabilities. "I'm still feeling my way (in terms of) how the store will evolve," he says. "But I know it has to be a 21st-century version of what I did in the '70s and '80s."
Source: Bill Curry, Paper Moon
Writer: Dan Eldridge