Our theme for the month of March is “cities.”

During my prep period, I solemnly write the next address on a scrap of notebook paper. The corner of 94th and Madison. Near 6th Avenue and Bleecker Street. Take the 6 to Spring Street. There’s a thrill to copying a new location to explore: you never know how successful this foray will be. It’s deceptively hard to find stores that sell them, and increasingly hard to find collections that contain any artistic vision.

What has been the focus of this latest craze of mine? Postcards.

I never would have dreamed, wading in mud in an Iowa culvert, clad my brother’s hand-me-down boots, that I would work as a young teacher in Manhattan. New York City was something of a mythical land, bound to the TV screen in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reruns on Saturday mornings.

Yet here I am, in one of the most famous cities in the world. I could be posting 370 cute artsy photos of me eating some fancy brunch that cost seventeen dollars more than its Wendy’s equivalent. Instead, I find myself scouring the city for perfect postcards.

There’s something about walking to every stationery and bookstore I can find in the city, delving into its unexpected depths, and hoping to find a postcard rack worthy of pillaging. New York is a city large enough to sustain a remarkable number of mom and pop shops worthy of my search. And its stationery stores are particularly fascinating to me: stores falling under the stationery description are stocked with anything from Lego sets, to decorative ceramic figurines, to authentic 90s plastic lunch boxes (I was blessed to personally snag one of those). The search for postcards is a noble excuse to enable these discoveries.

Don’t get me wrong, the search is also about the postcards themselves. If I manage to find a store that both stocks postcards, and doesn’t simply stock generic New York photographs with cheesy lettering, something in my heart fills to the brim. I spend eons meticulously rotating the rack and considering which postcard could be catered to each of my friends.

It’s a tiny, tiny piece of art to be admired and ceremoniously shipped across the country. Here’s a small collection of my favorite finds, in an attempt to prove the magic to you, my reader.

A Metro North train watercolor, found in a stationery store that I cannot seem to relocate, near my favorite bookstore at Smith and Butler in Brooklyn. Perhaps it appears once every hundred years. Its pastel colors lend it a mesmerizing warmth, coupled with the magic of trains in general.

A print of a painted postcard banning clogs (yes, the Dutch shoes). The blunt boldness of its colors match the sassy edge of this postcard set. I found them at Greenwich Letterpress, and fell instantly in love with their vibrant, independent personality.

A commemorative souvenir from Old John’s Luncheonette on the Upper West Side. When my friend and I received this postcard with our check, we shamelessly asked for a second copy before leaving. I love how this card captures such a minute slice of the city.

A jaw-dropping photograph of eggplants, as located in the coziest bookstore, Kitchen Arts and Letters, on the Upper East Side. I never knew that such a captivating purple could be found in nature, much less among unglamorous eggplants. This snapshot proved me wrong

A hand drawn rendering of Grand Central Terminal, collected from the New York Transit Museum (a museum I cannot recommend strongly enough). This building has a magic to it, as though you are in the heart of a thousand fellow adventurers, about to depart on the city’s arteries: the train and subway systems.

These are only a small sampling of the countless discoveries I have made so far. Cheers to a dozen more afternoons sifting through dusty and brightly lit shops, looking for an endlessly coveted postcard rack.

Susannah Boersma

Susannah currently lives in New Jersey and works as a 7th grade ELA teacher in East Harlem. When she is not teaching or writing, she can be found exploring independent bookstores, going backpacking, and trying to roller-skate on all the cool trails in the city. She is also recently experienced in the art of citrus skunk repellent (I know you’re impressed).