Shopping in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Judith Ritter

Harvard Square, the neighbourhood around the legendary university, has long been known as a bohemian gathering place full of quirky and unique people and shops. Though gentrification has made inroads, there are still plenty of one-of-a-kind enterprises with old-fashioned service.

For 125 years Leavitt and Peirce (1316 Massachusetts Avenue) has been a Mecca for Harvard students looking for a fine cigar, exotic cigarette, unusual pipe or for a game of chess in its rustic balcony-level “chess parlour”. Once more a gentlemen’s club for Harvard men than a shop, Leavitt and Peirce still appeals to Harvard students who drop by for the occasional Arturo Fuente Opus X or Ashton ESG cigars. Long gone are the days when, as salesperson, Julia Matorin says, “tobacco was a scholarly pastime”, but the store for smokers also carries brightly packaged herbal cigarettes from around the world, chess sets, backgammon games and Caswell-Massey gentlemen’s toiletries, so its popularity hasn’t dwindled along with students’ penchant for smoking. For non-smokers and non-game players the store is worth a visit for its Harvard memorabilia and sepia and black and white photographs of the historic university’s days gone by.

There are certain people who have a romance with office supplies and for paramours of pens and pencils Bob Slate Stationers (1288 Massachusetts Avenue) has been ground zero for such folks for nearly four decades. There are notebooks from Spain, France and Italy including legendary Moleskines of the type used by Earnest Hemingway and Bruce Chatwin that inspire novels. People who still write letters by hand will appreciate the case of fountain pens such as the platinum and wood Faber-Castells and unusual but not flashy cult favorite Capless Fountain Pen . There are racks of colour pencils, carpenter pencils, tiny pencils and for those who are endlessly seeking elusive organization of their desks there are bins, boxes, clips, and endless types of folders. And the service is the best, says store clerk Stacey Klinger, “The people who work here just love paper. We even love just touching it.”

There are dozens of bookstores in Cambridge, but perhaps the most unusual is the eighty-year-old Grolier Poetry Book Shop (6 Plympton Street). A favourite of poets such as Robert Lowell, and Beat icons such as Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Grolier does more than sell tomes of poetry. It is a centre for readings and the inspiration for the well-known Grolier Poetry Prize. This oldest poetry-only bookshop in America has 15,000 volumes including hard-to-find editions from Africa, Asia and Europe. For those with a hankering for little known and up and coming poets or who want to satisfy the urge to have a finely bound anthology of classics, Grolier has them.

Bolts of fine wools and racks of tweeds and corduroy line the walls and are piled and stacked high in the tiny but legendary men’s clothier and tailor The Andover Shop (22 Holyoke Street,www.theandovershop.com). All the Kennedy men, Al Gore and several U.S. Supreme Court judges have shopped there. “We’ve never sold a pair of jeans”, founder and owner Charlie Davidson says proudly surveying the rows of tweed and corduroy English country caps and vast collection of bow ties. The old school Harvard professor look doesn’t come cheap.

Less venerable and considerably hipper is Newbury Comics (36 JFK Street). Purveyor of vintage comics since its origin in the 1970’s, now the store not only sells rare and new comic books but a wealth of cult film collectibles, funky T- shirts, gag gifts, CDs, DVDs and music related magazines. Like a well-curated bazaar for the tattooed and pierced set, Newbury Comics is a treasure trove for those seeking indie music from le dernier cri bands with names like Dropkick Murphys and Driveby Trucker, and hard-to-find rock tour posters.