Needles & Pens

Great store. A ton of local jewelry at a reasonable price. I love coming in and looking around. They also have clothing and other little things.

Favorite spot in the city. I love talking to Breezy whenever I go in and looking at all of the new zines. If I am going to be honest, I probably wouldn’t be as interested and passionate about zinemaking if it weren’t for this store. They make it so accessible to see how wide the varieties are in zines and other forms of print. Fingers crossed I get to sell mine there sometime, whenever I decide to finally print them, that is.

Needles and Pens just gets better and better. I loved their legit DIY spirit when they were back on 16^th Street, and now their roomy new location lets them stock even more cool stuff — really beautiful jewelry, lovely clothes and a kids section that’s tiny but sells Kim Krans’ sweet board book. I can stand in front of their giant zine display wall forever like I’m at an art gallery, entranced. Only the art here costs like five dollars. With the Mission changing in so many ways that bum me out seeing this shop grow and thrive makes me super happy.

Quite an interesting selection of books and other wares. Picked up a candle here.

Last week I lost my favorite earrings, but heard from a friend that they were still selling them at Needles & Pens on Valencia. I accidentally stopped at the 16^th st store first and was told to ask for ‘Breezy’ on Valencia. When I got to the correct location they were having a bustling party for Pride weekend, but Breezy was right at the front to assist. I asked about my earrings, which I couldn’t see out on display. She showed me the earrings she was wearing and said ‘these earrings?’ She was wearing the exact style that I had lost! She proceeded to tell me that the design was no longer being made but she knows the artist and could ask for them to be remade and that she had just found her pair in a drawer that morning after assuming them lost a long time ago. She then took her pair out of her ears, disinfected them, and sold them to me (at a discount!!).
I couldn’t be more happy to be reunited with my fave accessory and was blown away at how sweetly Breazy handled helping me out. A lovely little happenstance at a great store. Thanks!

Cool book and zine shop down on south Valencia for the designer looking for some inspiration.
Because they don’t get as much foot traffic as mid-​Mission, this also means you don’t gotta deal with the obnoxious crowds. You can browse casually through a good selection, including some of my favorite options: Apartamento and Inventory.
You can also find a bunch of odd zines you’ve probably never heard of, with a staff that’s friendly and more than willing to help.

Needles & Pens is a nice balance of zines and DIY publishing with more professionally-​produced photography magazines and a table full of odd books. The space is clean and well-​lit, zines are organized in a way that makes sense, and the books are well chosen, the kinds of books that you end up flipping through because they look like they’ll have cool pictures and then they turn out to be interesting. Needles & Pens isn’t on the same scale as Quimby’s even if only because of its smaller size, but it is well worth checking out.

I had two days in San Francisco, and the second day I decided to check out Needles & Pens. I was there at 11:00, not aware of the store hours, and decided to check out the area for a while until it would open. I looked for wi-​fi so I could see if maybe it was closed today.
Nope, it would open at 12:00 on a wednesday. I returned at 12:00 and there was no sign of anyone in the store. Spent like 45 more minutes walking up and down Valencia Street, but still desolated.
Waste of time for someone who had such little time in SF. Kinda, sorta, very disrespectful towards customers.

I had two days in San Francisco, and the second day I decided to check out Needles & Pens. I was there at 11:00, not aware of the store hours, and decided to check out the area for a while until it would open. I looked for wi-​fi so I could see if maybe it was closed today.
Nope, it would open at 12:00. I returned at 12:00 and there was no sign of anyone in the store. I decided that I would wander around for 15 more minutes because I had already spent that much time anyways. 15 minutes later, still closed.
It was about 12:20 on a wednesday, and the store still hadn’t opened. Well, I had spent almost 2 hours walking Valencia Street up and down, so I figured I should wait just ten more minutes. Returning in the afternoon wasn’t an option because I had planned other stuff, since I had very limited time in the city.
So, I return at 12:35, and again, Needles & Pens is desolated.
What a waste of fucking time for someone who has a little more than a day in San Francisco. Spent 2 hours waiting on a store that didn’t even open.
Are you fucking serious?
This is disrespectful towards your customers.