Victoria’s newest book shop has set up their wares in Habit Coffee’s Chinatown location on weekends and offer a well-curated selection of both used and new books to peruse.
The pop-up book shop, Alphabet City, is run by partners Talia Freimanis and Michael Pollard, who between them have been working in book stores or libraries for decades.
“We might be the little, tiny new guy on the block but we’ve been working with books and in independent book stores for I guess, together, 30 years or so,” Freimanis told Victoria Buzz.
“I felt like it got to a point where we were foolishly thinking, ‘hey, we might be able to try this for ourselves.’”
Both Freimanis and Pollard are from Vancouver Island, and have spent most of their time working in the literary scene in Vancouver.
The duo opted to come back to Victoria to make their dream of running their own book shop come true because of the heavier financial constraints that exist in Vancouver.
“Its not sustainable,” said Freimanis.
“But that’s a good thing for Victoria because it means there’s new stuff that’s happening here that’s fun and exciting.”
According to Pollard, Alphabet City came together as a concept in the spring of 2023. That’s when they began collecting both new and used books to start their operation when they were ready.
By early 2025, they had enough books to begin their journey and set a date in October to move back to the island from Vancouver.
The duo looked at a few spaces, but none had materialized, so they reached out to Shane Devereaux who owns Habit Coffee to see if he would be willing to have Alphabet City set up shop in one of his cafes.
“He was really enthusiastic about it and said we could basically do whatever we want,” said Pollard.
“So we turned the back area of the coffee shop into a little store.”
They were set up there all December-long, and are now just there on weekends during the cafe’s operating hours.
As for how Freimanis and Pollard curate the books they sell, the duo says they follow their guts a lot of the time, but also put a lot of research into the process.
“Because we’ve worked in book stores and libraries for so many years, it’s kind of like that thing, I’m not sure what to call it, is just there in the background,” said Pollard.
“We also go through a lot of publishers catalogues for new releases for 2026.”
Freimanis added that because they are set up in a coffee shop at the moment, they try to curate the books they sell to the customers they have been interacting with.
“There’s a large element of happenstance to it,” she said.
“Peole will be there for a coffee and go, ‘hey there’s a little book shop operating at the back here,’ so we aren’t having people come in to buy $50 hardcovers necessarily, they’re just browsing and seeing different interesting things.”
Pollard added that the limited space also affects how they curate the books they sell at the pop-up, so every book they sell there has been put on the shelf with intention.
Alphabet City will continue to operate at Habit Coffee’s lower Pandora location on weekends for the near future, but are on the hunt for a space of their own.
They hope to find a small space somewhere in Victoria where they can continue to curate the books they sell with intention, but also have space to store the “mountains of boxes of books” that are currently stored in their home.
Check out Alphabet City next time you need something new to read, or if you just want to look at what they have to offer!
