Nestled among a group of storefronts on Broadway just east of City Hall, Curious is a space almost as bright and sunny as Alanna Medlock, owner of this new eclectic shop of meticulously curated and lovingly idiosyncratic artifacts. The new magazine and sundry shop, located at 352 Broadway, encourages patrons to play, to gather, to talk and to be, unsurprisingly, curious.

Connecticut-born, Chicago-raised and now a Hudson Valley resident, Medlock told Kingston Wire she wanted to create a community-driven space that welcomes visitors and begs them to ask questions in a day and age where we move fast and information moves even faster. Supplied with magazines and unique finds, art and indie publications as well as the odd toothbrush or chocolate,

Curious gives patrons the chance to slow down, catch up with the community and curl up with a magazine. Medlock said she wanted to bring Curious to life as a means of self-empowerment and play. Emboldened in part by her time as an active member of the Goddess Party, a community collective of women in the Hudson Valley that celebrates deep connection and empowerment through collaboration and the arts, she felt inspired to work on her own project.

“I’ve been hungry for a while to do something that’s mine — that’s only mine,” Medlock explained, having worked decades of freelance bookkeeping, educational publishing proofreading, editing and administrative work for other businesses.

Curious ventures to be both a “weird little shop” of unique finds, as well as a home for people to come in and learn about one another and feel safe in a space to connect. Medlock said she wants to “serve the spirit of curiosity,” for she believes that having a curiosity about ideas, about unfamiliar things, about people, is essential to surviving and helps us to function better as a society.

Like a traveler with a trunk of exotic wares, Medlock has collected a distinct assortment of unique finds for her store. Curious is full of magazines and publications which rotate monthly or quarterly, so the space is always changing and offering a new experience. On her shelves you’ll find both familiar names such as The Atlantic, Food & Wine, Psychology Today and The New Yorker, as well as lesser-known indie arts publications and zines, like film magazine Little White Lies and Maggot Brain, a music publication put out by Third Man Records, the brainchild of guitarist and producer Jack White. Visitors can find magazines about arts, literature, news, cooking — the array Medlock offers lends itself to something like a choose-your-own-adventure literary experience. There are stacks of vintage magazines, collected by local vintage purveyors Hyde nor Hare, as well as a kiosk of merchandise and written works such as The Duplex Planet by prolific local artist David Greenberger.

As an avid supporter of the local community of creatives, Curious offers a home to many Hudson Valley artists’ works. You will find pieces from local photographer and artist Maria Fernanda Hubeaut and shelves of artist-made t-shirts and free zines, as well as plenty of wall art that will rotate monthly to showcase different area artists.

In addition to being a veritable love-note to the arts, Curious has shelves of antique glassware and mugs lovingly collected from Medlock’s time working at the Red Owl Collective, an antique emporium in Kingston. Wanderers will find a bookcase full of small sculptures as well as the odd estate or yard sale find — lamps, plates, bowls, textiles and jewelry.

But Curious is no ordinary shop. Visitors can peruse her wares, read, talk, and drop off damaged lamps, faulty watches or torn clothes to be fixed. The back of the shop doubles as a repair studio run by Chrissy Rossettie Sakes of Makersville Hudson Valley, a local artist and musician who repairs lamps, fixes watches and engraves stone and metal as well as mends and hems clothes. Medlock hopes that in offering more services, “we can help each other” in the community, which is a large part of her goal for Curious. Her ambition is to create an interactive space, with ongoing events that unite the community and invite people in. An event is already being planned for October.

Curious is open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays, hopes to be an ever-evolving shop with community interest at its core. With antique mugs and jacket mending in one corner, chocolate and magazines in another, Curious has something to intrigue anyone, no matter what their interests. Medlock’s new shop reignites imagination and gives us back that little child-like spark that asks, “What is that?” The shop calls back to a time a lot of us long for: one with the simplicity of coming together and the nostalgia of being curious about what the world has to offer. For more information, check out the store’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/curiouskingston/