By now, it’s an all too familiar tale in this pretty city of ours: a building is acquired by new owners, contracts are up and so is the rent — way, way, up — leaving incumbent businesses fighting for survival. Such is the reality facing Juicy News, an independently-owned magazine, book, and stationery store located on Fillmore Street in Pacific Heights.
If you haven’t been, Juicy News is a gem of a place, piled high with an incredible range of niche and mainstream international magazines. For a print geek like me, it’s heaven. One of my first gigs was in the marketing department of a magazine publishing house in London, working on a bunch of titles — some of which, to my heart’s delight, Juicy News carries. So I’ve seen first hand the army of people and amount of skill and dedication it takes to create an aesthetically beautiful, useful, and commercially viable product, month in, month out. In Juicy News, owner Moe Salimi has curated a store that is the living embodiment of that, and his tenure first as manager, and since 2008 as owner, he’s also created something more — a powerful community hub.
As a perpetually broke freelancer, Pacific Heights, with its mansions and Maseratis can feel like a surreal place to live. But Juicy News, and its now-shuttered neighbor Tully’s Coffee, worked as the neighborhood’s real social levelers, accessible and welcoming to the super-rich and the super-struggling. As Moe says, “Everyone ends up here. The range is here, we cater to everyone. Relationships have started here, people get married, move away and come back to visit us with their kids.”
In recent years, Fillmore Street has seemed set on an uninspiring mission to turn itself into the least-useful-street-to-live-on (™), with more and more high-end — and seemingly devoid of customers — clothing stores moving in. Perhaps it makes sense to them to pay out the astronomical rents to get the visibility and association a spot on Fillmore allows them, but that just isn’t a viable option for an independently-owned store like Juicy News. And here’s the thing — Juicy News is a thriving business, just not thriving enough to shoulder the huge rent increase it is facing.
In recent years, Fillmore Street has seemed set on an uninspiring mission to turn itself into the least-useful-street-to-live-on (™), with more and more high-end — and seemingly devoid of customers — clothing stores moving in.
Over the last five years, despite the recession and the ever-present looming specter proclaiming “print is dead!”, Moe has grown the business substantially, sourcing magazines, books, and cards that serve the diverse needs of the local community and beyond (he ships to customers in Honolulu, and people drive down from Sacramento to get their fix). And as unlikely as it may seem, the future of print in general looks bright. According to 2014 research by Nielsen, millennials are embracing magazines like never before, even more than the boomer generation.
So to the future. What is certain is that by 31st January 2015, Juicy News will have to leave its premises of 23 years, at 2453 Fillmore Street. Since announcing the news, Moe says the community support has been amazing, citing a letter-writing campaign to the new owner (with whom he harbors no ill feeling) which he believes helped him negotiate an extension on his lease.
Now the focus is on moving up and moving on, and finding a new location to the store, but to make that a possibility, Juicy News needs to find the estimated $60K in associated moving costs and has launched an Indiegogo campaign to try and raise it.
And through it all, Moe is staying positive. As he says, “We believe in print, we love print, we need more places like Juicy News because there is a market for it. We’re committed to making it work.”
So come see this Fillmore treasure while you can, check out thecampaign site, and if print lights your fire, help Save Juicy News.
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