Picking up a copy of the Sunday Prague Post is an easy thing to do. If you live in Prague. Trying to find a copy of that paper and, let’s say, the South China Morning Post in Chicago will inevitably lead you to a small storefront operation near the busy intersection of Irving Park Road and Milwaukee and Cicero Avenues, known as Six Corners.
City Newsstand is the name of the place. It evolved from a corner newsstand born 20 years ago and now claims, with no argument, to be the largest magazine store in the Midwest.
It sits inconspicuously at 4018 N. Cicero Ave. (773-545-7377), across from a massive Sears, and carries Sunday papers from Prague, Paris, China, London and about 50 other cities, as well as thousands of magazines.
“At the newsstand we thought we’d stop at 200, maybe 300 titles,” says owner Joe Angelastri. “But there were always more we wanted to carry. We opened the store 10 years ago and just kept getting more and more magazines. It’s been kind of like cable TV. It just keeps expanding.”
Though it is impossible to be precise, Angelastri and the store’s buyer, Mike Oelrich, estimate that on any given daythe store is open from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week — the racks are filled with 6,000 titles, organized by category. Computer publications can be found under “Bill Gates Must Die.”
Looking for something to satisfy your darkest Martha Stewart urges? You can select from Country Kitchen, Country Christmas, Country Journal, Country Collection, Country Sampler or Country Accents.
Got a Paul Bunyan fetish? Why not pick up this month’s Log Homes Illustrated or Timber Homes Illustrated?
Name a magazine and the store more than likely carries it, from literary journals to adult titles. So sure are the operators of their inventory that there’s a $10 reward for anyone who can show them a title, not carried at City Newsstand, purchased at another area newsstand.
“It happens,” says Oelrich, proudly. “But not often.”
Looking for the latest issue of Foreign Affairs? There it is, right next to Girl Talk, a new British Isles import aimed at that narrowest niche market — cross-dressers.
Some customers come from as far away as Iowa and Michigan, often spending as long as four hours in the store. Many regulars leave each week with $100 worth of glossy reading material. Some fly off the racks faster than others.
When’s the last time you thumbed through a copy of Biblical Archaeology Review?
