Always Here Books occupies a corner retail space on Mississippi Avenue — a room with large windows on two sides and the warmth that a well-stocked small bookshop generates in an evening. The shop opened in 2021 and carries literature, art, and community writing alongside children's books that take the category seriously. The exterior window display is one of the better arguments for the neighbourhood bookshop as civic institution: a changing arrangement that makes the inside legible from the street and invites the passing decision to stop that the bookshop depends on. Always Here has become a short address on a street that needed one, with a café corner that serves the coffee correctly and allows slow occupancy.
Mississippi Avenue, Portland, United States