Last spring, on the Wednesday before Michaela “Mick” Granger opened her little horror-themed book and movie store on Northeast Alberta Street, Midslumber Media (1609 NE Alberta St., 971-347-3148, midslumbermedia.com), she did the indie-bookstore version of a media blitz. Which is to say, she put up a single TikTok post.
“I just said, ‘I’m going to be opening this store,’” Granger remembers. “It took off really fast, way faster than I anticipated. I thought maybe a hundred people would see it. It was thousands.” When she opened on March 22, there was a line on the sidewalk waiting to be frightened.
Midslumber isn’t alone. Independent bookstores are riding a national wave of interest. After a decades-long die-off, bookstores have seen 70% growth nationwide since 2021, according to the American Booksellers Association—a renaissance helped along by depressed commercial rents and a screen-weary public.
But nowhere in the city is thicker with bookstores than Northeast Alberta Street, which has evolved into what fine art bookstore Monograph Bookwerks co-owner John Brodie believes is among the densest tracts of book shops in the United States—a humble spiritual successor to Manhattan’s legendary but now defunct book row on Fourth Avenue…