I had a scare the other day when I went to one of my all-time favorite stationery shops in New York City. I’ve been going to Paper Presentation on 18th St. for about 20 years. They used to have more competition in the neighborhood from the late, great A. I. Friedman and Sam Flax, and a shorter-lived store called Envelopper, but Paper Presentation always had one of the biggest selections of notebooks and journals (as well as pens, art supplies, cards, gifts, rubber stamps, stationery, envelopes, etc.)

The other day, I just ran in to find a birthday card. I was focused on the card section and noticed that it had moved to a different area. Then I realized that they had very few birthday cards to choose from. Then I started looking around further and realized that all the shelves were looking really empty. I went to the part of the store where all the notebooks used to be and was horrified to see that the shelves were nearly bare! And that usually means only one thing: store going out of business.

• 

• 

I was quite shocked, but also… not shocked. In NYC, so many great stores have closed in the last few years. There have been articles about certain neighborhoods becoming retail wastelands, because greedy landlords demand such high rents that no one can survive, and the spaces end up just sitting empty. Paper Presentation has a huge space spanning the whole block between 18th and 19th St. and I could imagine that it would be tough to sell enough paper products to pay that rent.

• 

• 

When I went to pay for my birthday card I asked the cashier what was going on. The news turned out not to be so dire: they had been planning to close and had a big sale to clear out their stock. “For three weeks, it was crazy here,” she said. “People were buying up everything, all the Moleskines…” But at the last minute, someone stepped in and bought the store, and at least for the near future, the plan is to re-stock and keep it open as a stationery store. [UPDATE: per a comment below, the store is still open and has changed their name to City Papery.]

I’m still blown away by how wiped out the store looked. I was just there about 6 weeks ago looking at their Bindewerk notebooks and everything seemed normal. I spent over $50, so I can’t help being bummed that I missed their big sale! Most of the non-seasonal stock is now back to full price, and ironically, among the very few notebooks they had left were these larger size Bindewerk linen journals… no pocket ones, sadly!

Support your local retailers, people. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.