I’ve seen enough: The Newsroom at 1728 Connecticut Avenue is THE BEST STORE IN DC. You want magazines? They have magazines. You want tchotchkes and American flag paraphernalia? They have tchotchkes and American flag paraphernalia. Do you want to be visually inspired through the act of entering a physical space and seeing something unexpected, all while having a casual conversation that warms your heart, rather than scrolling supine in underwear-clad oblivion on Instagram or Pinterest? You can do that here.
The Newsroom near Dupont Circle in northwest Washington is flanked by Tatiana’s Pizza, one of the homes of the famous DC Jumbo Slice. It used to be farther up the street, on the other side of the avenue. Upon entering, you will be immediately affronted by four enormous stacks of newspapers leaning against bookcases filled with anachronisms. “The Little Flowers of Saint Francis” sits next to a paperback called “Addicted: A Woman’s Sexual Obsession Will Be Her Downfall or Her Liberation.” C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity” lies beneath “Shopaholic Ties the Knot.” Behind you is a mirror and a cookbook shelf, with everything from tomes on baking by Julia Child to a slim Better Homes and Gardens volume on crepes.
And we haven’t even gotten to the magazines yet! Setting aside for a moment my indecision between “Reading Corinthians: A Literary and Theological Commentary” and D.H. Lawrence’s “Apocalypse,” I make my way up a small staircase where I am greeted by two hazel eyes, a moist nose, and a giant plastic cone. Yes, it’s a dog, with more than a passing resemblance to a mop, and clearly in a state of convalescence. He guards the cash register as his friendly owner tells me the whole story.
On my left is an appealing red shelf with the latest major newspapers, served with a non-sequiturial side of Rachael Ray cookbooks from the early 2000s. There’s today’s edition of Politico, as well as a master index of every Southern Living recipe from the 1980s.
It is starting to occur to me that nothing has ever been thrown out in this store. And that’s a good thing. One person’s hoarding is another person’s maximalism and joie de vivre. Finally, I find what I am looking for:
There are international editions of almost every mainstay, not just from this month but from several previous months. If The Economist is more your style, it’s sitting on the shelf above. And bizarrely, in the middle of the room, under a profusion of mini Old Glories, is a glass case bearing heartburn medication, cough syrup, and toothpaste.
I love this store. It’s such a relief to see something unmanicured, that has a human touch, where I can chat at the cash register, where there are no automated checkouts. It’s like a field of wildflowers or a person with fucked-up but attractive teeth. It just hits different these days.
I’m contemplating what to buy. There are just so many niche publications to choose from. Do I want the latest issue of Pioneer Woman or Log Cabin Homes? A used blue hardcover called “Devotions for a Sacred Marriage?” Or do I want that random-ass Robitussin?
In the end I purchase The World of Interiors from March 2024, and a paperback from 1999 about “self-care” (eyeroll, I know). But there’s some good stuff in here. On the page facing the Contents is a small paragraph:
People will always be people. That means there will always be a part of us that wants to use the human qualities that make no sense to accountants. Like idle chatter. Like lying in the grass under a tree on a June day listening to the birds. And like giving useful advice to a friend.
There’s a certain strain of maximalism that has entered design culture. I first started noticing it around 2016, when Alessandro Michele had already been the creative director of Gucci for about a year and a half (he has recently been hired at Valentino instead). There was something that felt countercultural about his vision back then, almost as if it anticipated RETVRN culture. Some of my friends hated it.
You can see a similar energy in the aesthetic choices of someone like Matthew Walther, editor of Catholic journal The Lamp. His setup resembles the atmosphere of The Newsroom: disheveled, eclectic, defiant, and honestly…fucking cool.
You can see this particular constellation of choices all over these days. It’s in the essay collection All Things Are Too Small. In hipster fashion newsletters that fawn over old-fashioned branding. On the Instagram account The Maximalist Dreamer. And for me, the most glorious expression of it is this picture of Helena Bonham Carter, which I wrote about for one of my first ever posts in 2021.
I’m not anti-minimalist. Sometimes clean lines and ascetic emptiness really hit the spot. But not right now. People want to feel alive, to be more carefree. To make connections again. And to perhaps save the things that have meaning to them, instead of casting them away.
A year and a half ago Senator Josh Hawley made a speech exhorting young men to take action. “Why don’t you turn off the computer,” he said, pacing with gusto, “and go ask a real woman on a date?” I say the same to you, Substacker. If you’re a cool person who likes to read, and you’re in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., why not go patronize The Newsroom? You might find something inspiring, and plastic cones for puppies don’t pay for themselves.