First Friday Opening

The Old Post Office Espresso Publishing House, a.k.a. the New Ester Republic Press Office, will be open, with art, papers, books, and appetizers for the June First Friday. I'll be closing at 8, though, so I can go run and look at PhotoSynthesis and the Annex shows.

A bit of history: the building in which the Republic is soon to be housed was originally the Ester post office, and was built in 1971. Or thereabouts. It resided off the village square, or maybe next to Ruth Jasper's house (postmaster)--I'm not sure, gotta check--until the new, imported-log-cabin-style post office was built in 1986 or thereabouts. The building sat around for a while until Craig N. Buchanan purchased it, and sat around some more until he turned it into a gift shop/espresso house called the Ester Stash. The Stash was in the village square on the Kulp side of the parking lot.

Then Craig decided to turn it into a full-scale espresso shop, and it became Ester Espresso and moved to Berry, where the original Ester post office was located, to the Gold Hill parking lot. After a year, it was sold, and then after a bit more, sold again and moved across the street to the Chevron station parking lot, where it became Pioneer Espresso. A year and a half or two years ago, Hannah Hill bought it and it became The First Cup. And now it has returned to Ester, where the Ester post office (historical) belongs. Yay!