Yesterday, the first core 77 retail store opened in portland! 23 NW 4th Avenue - between Burnside and Couch St.
from their mission statement:

"Core77 is the product of its environment: it was born as a project at Pratt Institute - an occupational training school that at one time taught stuff such as bee keeping - that still has a steam power plant and a Tiffany floored library. In particular it is the child of the Pratt Industrial Design department, a creaky but functioning Bauhaus-ian training program which focused (at the time, at least) on the principles of visual language and the hand-skills necessary to explore them.

Core77 was and still is hand-built by a small passionate team of people. It is about as "bespoke" as a website can be, and proudly displays its rough edges. Our editorial focus, while sometimes obscured by the cool stuff in the blog has always been on "inside baseball" - the practice of the profession. And to us that is everything surrounding actual making - the production of artifacts and the labor of the process of design. The early industrial era can-do attitude, the occupational foundation of the practice of ID; these are essential to the Core77 definition of design."

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-joel