It’s good to know yourself. And to own your own oddities. For me, that means that I proudly declare my obsessions with luggage, Dutch bikes, and–let’s be honest–the Dutch overall. Another item for that list? Paper products.
Notebooks, file folders, calendars…I have stacks of them and they all make me absurdly happy. Which is why every time I visit Vancouver, British Columbia, I swing by the Regional Assembly of Text.
TRAOT–yes, I’m going to shorten it like that–is fantastic in a few ways: It’s a DIY-type shop with letterpressed cards surrounded by typewriters, but it’s more than that. I love all the aspects of it–how they silkscreen ships and bicycles onto wooden boxes, T-shirts, calendars. Every single time I’ve been in the store, they’re listening to This American Life. You can make your own buttons. I just find it completely charming, and always pick up something when I’m there. Every single time.
A friend of mine–who shares my obsession–was so tickled by her visit that she held a letter-writing club on her front porch last summer, after visiting. (If you decide to try this yourself, remember to bring stamps and addresses. Otherwise, the letter sits for two months and you never send it, because you’ve emailed that person 400 times since you wrote the letter.)
TRAOT is located on this fantastic strip out of the downtown heart of Vancouver (South Main, inevitably referred to as SoMa in articles, but mostly known as Mount Pleasant). Another favorite shop is down the street, Eugene Choo, which is definitely on the spendier side, but has a wonderfully well-edited collection of sweaters, dresses, and blouses, along with some inventive stuff for guys.
Also walkable nearby are the yummy Zipaing Sushi (a tiny shop with posters from the Bauhaus movement on the walls), Smoking Lily (where Betty picked up a smoking-hot asymmetrical jacket on a previous visit), and Umeboshi Footwear (which often doesn’t have my size, but I keep visiting anyway).
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