Kiosk

“Interesting things from Interesting Places”

The signage to Kiosk is a little hidden to the untrained eye. My eye would definitely be one of said “untrained eyes” as every time I am in New York City I find myself wandering aimlessly, just hoping something cool will jump out and punch me in the face. Otherwise, there is a good chance that I will miss it.  Fortunately, when I saw the sign hanging above the sidewalk on spring street the other day my brain actually registered something. Kiosk? Haven’t I been hearing about this shop for a little while now? Brian from Coolhunting mentioned it was worth checking out, adding “Don’t be thrown off by the strange trip up the front stairs, that place is awesome.” More importantly Miss Oh, who could arguably out-hunt the coolest of cool hunters casually mentioned it on one of my previous trips to NYC. You can bet if she has told you to see something, no matter how casual her assertions come across — it will be good.

So, when I turned the corner and almost sprinted up the steep stairwell to the space that is Kiosk it was because I was excited to see what lay in store. So to speak.

Traveling is one of my favorite things to do. And when traveling, finding new things, or rather, products that are native to the region of travel tend to be the ones that are the most fun. For instance, a fully used tube of Belgian toothpaste is in my drawer at the moment. The Flemish written on the backside makes absolutely no sense to me, but damn if it does not look cool. A fish shaped bottle opener from Uruguay was only one of the surviving highlights of a trip to South America. Belgian Cycling Supporters hats and diaries from the local frites shops. Even the foreign  design on a 10 year old Mars Bar wrapper from London was something that I could not bare to throw out. Which is why it remains where it is — smashed between the pages of a notebook somewhere.

So, you can see why I was excited to check out Kiosk. The concept being that the purveyors of the shop travel around the globe for me, finding new products to stock their shelves. New trinkets to entice me up their ragged stairs and into what looks to be their apartment. Their display and delivery is a little kooky at best, but charming and right in line with their business model on the whole. Which is why I could not help but to ask them to start filling a bag for me. I quite literally wanted something from each of the collections.

This time around the three collections are “Groundhogs Day,” “Iceland”- which is a collection of Icelandic candies, and “Portugual,” by far the most comprehensive of the three. Each one of their collections walks the perfect line between curated art flavored niceties and extremely affordable/functional pieces you want to own. I bought a Kaweco Sport Pen from Germany.

What is nice about this place is that with each product smart bits of copy are included. Each one a personalized short tale from whence the piece came, the city or country of origin and possible uses directly from the owners. When finding trinkets like this, out in the wild, the allure comes from actually finding them yourself. Then being able to craft and build your own stories around them. But the copy on each of these pieces is what broke down this buying barrier. Knowing from whence they came from, and why they were added to the collection did the trick. And the range is incredible, from backyard, back-alley camping —Audubon Bird Call — to new uses for a ratchet and even the elusive and hilarious Citra Sipper . It is these little stories that hammered home the pieces in my mind. I had not gone out and found these things for myself, but somehow knowing a little bit more about them gave them just the little bit extra that I needed to make the connection.

Kiosk can be found on the second floor of 95 Spring Street, NY, NY