Good news for Bostonians, traditionalists, and computer-history junkies: Out of Town News, the 54-year-old newsstand in the heart of Cambridge’s Harvard Square, won’t be closing after all. The kiosk that sold Paul Allen the copy of Popular Electronics that inspired him and Bill Gates to found a company called Micro-Soft has a new tenant that has signed a five-year lease to operate it as a newsstand.

In 2009 and beyond, Out of Town is an anachronism–the Web is the biggest “out of town newsstand” imaginable–but it’s a happy one, and one of the last remaining old-school merchants in Harvard Square. (I’m still grappling with the ugly fact that the wonderful independent bookseller Wordsworth died four years ago and that the store that claims to be the Harvard Coop is in fact an uninspiring Barnes and Noble.) May Out of Town live forever–or at least for as long as there are magazines and newspapers and people who want to buy them.

(Photo by Flickr user afagen)

 
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