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Comment by Q6T46nT668w6i3m | Hacker News Reader

I maintain a small list of places friends should visit when they are in Boston. Algiers was on that list. The Curious George Store and Out of Town News are on that list, but they'll soon be gone too. My recommended Harvard Square places are now Club Passim, Harvard Book Store, and Grolier Poetry Bookshop. It's a bummer.

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If you are going for Hsq institutions Grendel's Den should really be on that list, they've been around more than 40 years and even won a case that went to the supreme court.

It's great for me to hear that Grendel's is still there. I used to love to go there for their Sour Cream Chocolate cake.

I don't imagine Elsie's diner is there (and also Tommy's). I loved to get bagels at Elsie's of a morning, knowing that the bagel would be infused with whatever else was on the grill that morning.

Elsie's has been gone for a good couple of decades. I loved their sandwiches and thick frappes (which were called Westerns as I recall).

Plus daily $5 lunch specials, which basically sustained me through a startup and grad school...

I am curious about why you include Out of Town News. I know it is of historical interest under its original owner but I looked in the other day and it didn't seem especially interesting: as much Harvard gear, sodas, and candy as magazines and those don't seem so significant anymore.

I think it's just that it's iconic. If you had to pick a focal point [1] to meet in Cambridge, it would probably be Out of Town News for most people. But you're pretty much right. Probably no one's going to buy the newspaper from their hometown in Ireland there any longer.

The Curious George store actually isn't that old relatively speaking (from the 90s) I believe. I think it was in some way an offshoot of another Harvard Square bookstore (Wordsworth) which went out of business at the same time that lots of bookstores did. (There was a time when I would regularly make a weekend trip into Harvard Square in part to do the rounds of bookstores and record stores. Most are long gone.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)

Any chance we can see the whole list? : )

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