As the In Other Words website says, the independent feminist bookstore and community center was founded in 1993, and moved from its original location on Southeast Hawthorne to its Northeast Killingsworth space in 2006. The mission of In Other Words, according to the website, is “to strengthen resistance against a culture of oppression. We seek to create a safer space where women, people of color, queer, trans, gender variant folks, workers, and those who live at the intersections of these identities can organize for self-determination and build a sustainable movement for liberation.”
The volunteer-run space gained a national profile thanks to its association with “Portlandia,” though In Other Words later made headlines for repudiating the IFC sketch comedy show.
From the start, “Portlandia” filmed its best-known sketches, featuring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein as humorless feminists operating a bookstore called “Women and Women First,” at In Other Words.
But it all blew up in 2016, when members of the In Other Words community cut ties with “Portlandia,” and published a blog post on the website (which includes R-rated language) accusing crew members of leaving the store in a mess, noting that being on “Portlandia” didn’t make any money for the center, and attacking the show on a cultural level, as having had “a net negative effect on our neighborhood and the city of Portland as a whole.”
