Out of Town goes out

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — They survived when Barnes & Noble took over the Harvard Coop, and even when the Tasty, a 16-stool diner with a fanatical following, gave way to an Abercrombie & Fitch.

CJ Gunther for The New York Times

The newsstand’s fate is big news on Harvard Square. The Cambridge city manager is seeking another news vendor for the 431-square-foot kiosk.

But when word spread this week that Out of Town News, the landmark newsstand just outside Harvard’s gates, might close, the legions who love Harvard Square went numb.

 

Every now and then I hear news from back home in Massachusetts.  This was not good news to me. The New York Times reports that Out of Town News is going out of business.

I will have the Harvard Square of my teens and 20's to remember.  I spent many a few buck at the Out of Town.  In my comic reading days they always seemed to have the new stuff out first, and I had to have it.  Back then I liked getting an out of Massachusetts taste for news.  Since the Internet as we know it did not exist this was the only way possible.  It was the only place that you could get some off the wall, obscure publication also. If it was in print, the Out of Town had it.  And what a location.  In the middle of Harvard Square.  No. not on a corner, in the middle.

Out of Town, have not seen you in years, knowing that you will close makes me sad, but it is evolution.  Like they say in the article:

“Many people who are lamenting the loss of the kiosk,” Ms. Jillson said, “are certainly people who get up in the morning, turn on their laptop and get their news on the Internet.”