The magic of a classic print magazine shop has stood the test of time. Walking into one today evokes memories of hours of thumbing through all the carefully curated glossy pages, getting lost in the words and art, and finding the precise ones that call to you.
So to celebrate the launch of Cosmo’s Fall Issue starring JENNIE and its six monochromatic covers—in purple, light pink, crimson, yellow, hot pink, and green—we wanted to turn the spotlight on six independent magazine shops across the country. We reached out to each store to exclusively display one of the six cover colors on its shelves, giving every edition a home within a different community. Read on to hear how each shop has cultivated a customer experience particularly unique to its city, neighborhood, and magazine-collecting community.
FINE PRINT
Dallas, TX
@fnprnt_shop | Displayed Cover Color: PURPLE
Crystal Cobb, founder and owner
Tell us about your shop and the role it plays within your community.
Fine Print is an indie magazine shop and poster gallery located in Dallas, in the Oak Cliff neighborhood, an area deeply rooted in culture and history. We currently carry a mix of independent, international, and well-known magazines and books focused on the visual and creative arts, along with a collection of rare and vintage art and gallery exhibition posters.
Fine Print has become a resource and a third space for the Dallas community, with the magazines primarily being the common ground that brings people together. Someone might come in looking for a particular magazine and end up discovering a new title they’ve never heard of before, learn about a photographer or subject they come across, or simply strike up a conversation with us or someone else in the shop about art, music, fashion, print, or life in general.
It’s a space where we get to slow down a little, flip through pages, talk, and just hang out for a while—a place people can return to whether they know exactly what they are coming in for, want to discover something new, or simply want to catch up and share stories and ideas.
Take us back to the beginning. When did you open, and why?
Fine Print opened in June 2025, so we actually just celebrated our first anniversary. I’ve had a career in design for many years now, and magazines and books have always been a resource for my creative work and ideas and something I’ve collected since I was young. I grew up before the internet, so magazines and books were how we discovered what else was out there—trends, artists, stories, places, fashion, music, and culture from around the world.
Once I started traveling, I would come across different magazine titles and voices that I hadn’t seen before and weren’t readily available locally. I would visit shops and newsstands in other cities, stock up, and come home with luggage stuffed with magazines and books. If I tried to order magazines from overseas, the shipping could sometimes cost more than the magazine itself. At the same time, so much of our lives had moved online, and I found myself returning to my magazine collection. I needed something physical that took me offline for a while and gave me space to slow down, think, and reflect.
Eventually, I started thinking, Why not Dallas? Why couldn’t we have more of these magazines and voices from around the world here in one place? A space where we could walk in, find the titles we had seen or heard about online, discover new ones, and experience them in person. That was really the beginning of Fine Print. I decided to create the resource I had been constantly searching for here.
What’s one customer interaction you’ll never forget?
I had a customer come into the shop after hearing about Fine Print through a local magazine article. He saw that we carried Popeye, a Japanese fashion and lifestyle magazine, and we just started talking. He ended up telling me that he had lived in Japan in the ’70s and Popeye was one of the magazines he loved to read while he was there. All these years later, he was still finding and buying copies online and had no idea there was a shop in Dallas where he could walk in and pick one up.
I remember standing there talking to him and thinking, This is exactly why this place needs to exist. A magazine he first discovered halfway around the world decades ago was now sitting on a shelf here. That interaction was incredibly validating for me. It reminded me that the love for print isn’t just for a specific generation, nor is it a fad or a trend. People have had longstanding relationships with magazines and books, and they still value, collect, seek out, and read them today.
Do you have an early memory of magazines or Cosmo specifically that has stayed with you?
My earliest memory is probably the excitement of getting my Highlights magazine in the mail as a kid. There was something special about having a magazine actually addressed to me and filled with things I was interested in at that age. My father, who was an artist, would take me around Dallas to different bookstores for magazines and books, and I found myself diving into his collection, too. He taught me that if there was something I wanted to know, learn, or seek out, I could reference it in a book or magazine.
As I grew and got older, my interest in magazines grew with me. Going to the beauty shop meant picking up Hype Hair beforehand so I could find a hairstyle to show my beautician. As I got more into music and culture, it was Word Up!, Vibe, and The Source. Later, fashion magazines like Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and Cosmo helped me learn about trends, designers, shopping, and developing my own personal style.
And, of course, who’s going to forget about those Cosmo quizzes? I was so excited when they started coming back because they immediately reminded me of me and my girls taking quizzes about boys, relationships, and an adult life we were nowhere close to having yet. Now, getting to have this conversation with Cosmo after magazines have been part of so many different stages of my life feels like such a beautiful full-circle moment.
BOLD MAGAZINE SHOP
Portland, ME
@boldmagshop | Displayed Cover Color: LIGHT PINK
Stacy Mitchell, founder and owner
Tell us about your shop and the role it plays within your community.
Bold is an independent magazine shop in Portland, Maine’s Arts District, bringing together local and international print across art, design, fashion, food, culture, and more. We think of it as a modern take on the magazine stand that might have existed decades ago. After being open for just a few months, it’s becoming a place where people can finally hold a title they’ve seen online, support a publisher or artist whose work they’re excited about, or simply browse and flip through something beautiful. We’ve started hosting magazine releases, readings, and other events, and the conversations have spilled out of the shop and onto the sidewalk. That’s been one of my favorite parts of the shop so far.
Take us back to the beginning. When did you start, and why?
We opened around Thanksgiving 2025, so we’re still pretty new. I moved from New York City to Portland in 2021 and was surprised how difficult it was to find magazines here. I have always loved them and had been closely following what was happening in the magazine world, and I felt something exciting building. I distinctly remember when Monocle launched Konfekt and when it was announced that i-D was coming back into print. I felt a real urgency around it. Print was clearly entering a moment, and yet there wasn’t really a place in Portland to experience that resurgence in person.
What’s one customer interaction you’ll never forget?
A high school student came in recently and told me he’d never bought a magazine before. He spent a long time looking through the different titles, carefully considering what to take home. For him, it was really about discovery. He wasn’t looking for something he already knew he liked.
It’s harder nowadays to stumble across something truly new. Small, local shops are really good at creating those moments, and I think that’s part of what makes it so fun to still shop in places like Portland. Of course, that can also make the shop feel overwhelming for some people when they don’t recognize many of the titles, but I like that tension. You don’t have to know exactly what you’re looking for to find something you love.
Do you have an early memory of magazines or Cosmo specifically that has stayed with you?
My aunt would come over on the weekends with a stack of magazines and catalogs in hand, ready to chat and browse with me, my mom, and my sisters for the afternoon. In middle school and high school, magazines were how I learned about things and found inspiration. I remember saving ideas for my prom dress. On weekends, I’d go to my best friend’s house with a stack of magazines—Cosmo included—and we’d take the quizzes, talk about what we were reading, and just hang out. That’s what we did on a Saturday night, and it was the best.
BEVERLY HILLS NEWSSTAND
Los Angeles, CA
@beverlyhillsnewsstand | Displayed Cover Color: GREEN
Glenn Martin, store manager
Tell us about your shop and the role it plays within your community.
Beverly Hills Newsstand, owned by Evan and Debra Mader, has been in business for over 50 years. In the almost six years I have been working at the newsstand, I have realized what an integral establishment it is to the community. People use it as a landmark (“I will meet you at the newsstand”). Purchasing newspapers and/or magazines is part of our customers’ daily/weekly rituals. Parents come by to show their children where they came with their parents when they were children to buy newspapers and magazines. The most frequent comment is: “Please don’t go anywhere. We need you to always be here.”
Take us back to the beginning. When did you start, and why?
As a retired English teacher, the thought of working in a world of hard print was ideal after moving from Connecticut to California. The newsstand is a few blocks from where I live, and when I went strolling through the community, I came across it and purchased copies of the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal and asked if there was a job opportunity.…
What’s one customer interaction you’ll never forget?
Of the thousands of wonderful interactions I have encountered, the one that stands out is one I had with Maria: Her father was terminally ill with cancer and, as it turned out, only had a few more days of life. He specifically requested a lengthy list of magazines because he wanted to spend his time reading and discussing articles with his family and friends. The magazines spanned from Sports Illustrated for Kids (his grandson is an avid sports junkie) to Knitting for All (his wife knitted every day). When I saw Maria a week later, she informed me that her dad had passed away and that the magazines had done so much to buoy his spirits during the final days.
Do you have an early memory of magazines or Cosmo specifically that has stayed with you?
Growing up, I recall seeing Time magazine around the house and that my two older sisters read Cosmopolitan and Vogue. However, I was much more of a sports fan. My first official encounter with a magazine was when I received a subscription for Sports Illustrated when I was 16. I recall my first issue that awaited me in my mailbox had Marcus Allen (of USC) on the cover, and it was entitled “Rolling Thunder.” I’ve been hooked on hard print ever since that day in 1982.
ICONIC Magazines
New York, NY
@iconicmagazines | Displayed Cover Color: YELLOW
Tammy David, photographer and content and media director
Tell us about your shop and the role it plays within your community.
ICONIC has three stores in Lower Manhattan, on Mulberry, Lafayette, and Bowery Streets, and we just opened our fourth location, a newsstand in Hudson Yards. ICONIC has been around for years, so a lot of people who live or work around our stores have made ICONIC part of their routine.
We’re a magazine store, but we’re also a convenience store. People come in for coffee and the paper in the morning, something they need on their way home, or just to browse what’s new. On any given day, you’ll see neighborhood regulars, tourists, magazine collectors, and people from fashion, art, photography, and publishing coming through the stores.
Something that’s also very important to us is giving independent and smaller publications a platform. We’re inspired by what our sister store, Casa Magazines, has done for independent print. I produced a video series called ICONIC Takeaway, where we invite magazine founders and editors to our takeaway window and have them talk about their publication in their own words. We’re also working on a dedicated zine corner where people can come in and discover zines and small press.
Take us back to the beginning. When did you open, and why?
Hemal Sheth, our founder and president at CASA ICONIC, arrived in New York in 1993 and pretty much immediately started working at his uncle’s convenience store on Lafayette and Spring. In 1995, he took over the business, renovated the store, and started bringing in more magazines.
Hemal really loved magazines and saw that there was an opportunity to offer people a much wider selection. By 2000, he had started distributing independent publications as well, and eventually he was bringing French and international magazines to retailers in New York and across the country.
The name ICONIC came later around 2014 because Hemal wanted to build an actual brand around the magazine store. More than 30 years later, the business has grown. Hemal took over Casa Magazines in 2024, and his youngest son, Rohan Sheth, has joined the company. But what he started with is still very much there: good magazines, personal service, and serving the neighborhood and uplifting the industry.
What’s one customer interaction you’ll never forget?
THERE ARE A LOT! But one of the earliest was one time at our Mulberry store, there was this customer with a huge pile of magazines and books. It looked like he was either going on a yearlong vacation or building a library. I remember Prince: Icon being somewhere in that pile.
He was very low-key and unassuming, but he had a presence. So naturally, I started asking questions. I asked if he was going on vacation, and he told me he was from L.A. He shared that he wishes L.A. had more stores like ours. He was dressed head to toe in Adidas. He looked good, so I asked if he was a designer. He said, “No, I’m an artist.” So I asked if I could follow him on SoundCloud or Instagram. It was Teezo Touchdown. I wanted to disappear. I was so embarrassed. But he was so cool about it and even gamely posed with his feature in Interview magazine. I listened to Teezo nonstop for the next week.
Do you have an early memory of magazines or Cosmo specifically that has stayed with you?
I grew up in Manila, and one of my earliest memories of Cosmopolitan was reading an issue with Cindy Crawford at a hair salon. The first copy I actually owned had Sarah Michelle Gellar on the cover. I was a junior in high school. I loved the centerfolds and bedside astrologers even if I had the sex life of a nun because I was only 16.
I’m also a writer and photographer, and I was lucky enough to contribute to the Philippines edition of Cosmopolitan. That was definitely a full-circle moment for me. I think the last article I had published there was called “What We Find Hot About Guys’ Bods,” by Tammy David. I sincerely hope nobody can find that article anywhere.
SMOKE SIGNALS NEWSSTAND
San Francisco, CA
@smokesignalsnewsstand | Displayed Cover Color: CRIMSON
Fadi Berbery, owner
Tell us about your shop and the role it plays within your community.
I opened Smoke Signals Newsstand in the Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco in April 1995 and am still going 31 years on. And now I’m the only traditional newsstand left in San Francisco and the Bay Area with over 1,500 different titles.
Take us back to the beginning. When did you open, and why?
The idea was to have a European-style newsstand that was missing in our cosmopolitan city, which would carry magazines, newspapers, tobacco, cigars, and coffee-table books.
What’s one customer interaction you’ll never forget?
Most of my customers are regulars, and many have become close friends. One memorable encounter that I’m very happy to share: Years ago, I was having a conversation with a girl who was mentioning how impressed she was with the selection of international titles that I had while another customer I knew well was browsing, and somehow I included him in the conversation. Then I got busy while they were still chatting. I later found out they dated and they got married. Serendipity!
THE NEWSROOM
Washington, D.C.
1728 Connecticut Ave NW | Displayed Cover Color: HOT PINK
Stephen and Ana Maria Bota, owners
Tell us about your shop and the role it plays in your community.
We are big on print. Hence, we plan on retiring at the Newsroom. To complement newspapers and magazines, we started accepting book donations from our community, which we sell to raise our funds for our charity work in the Indigenous regions of Guatemala twice a year.
Take us back to the beginning. When did you open, and why?
The year was 1999 when we got married and had our first child. We started looking for things to do to raise a family, and in May 2000 came an opportunity to buy the News Express magazine store in Bethesda, Maryland. In 2004 also came an opportunity to buy the Newsroom and the News World in D.C.. We bought them and have not looked back.
What’s one customer interaction you’ll never forget?
Dr. Jill Biden when she visited our shop on January 27, 2021, to buy a magazine she was featured in. That stands out the most to me and is the most memorable in the sense that she was a sitting first lady at the time and the Secret Service was with her! They had combed through our shop for a while before her visit.
