A stationery shop in Chicago now requires a bouncer — not for crowd control at a nightclub, but to manage the line of people desperate to buy fountain pens and planners.
Paper & Pencil, a 400-square-foot Andersonville store, has customers wrapping around multiple blocks. Some waited four hours to shop on Hobonichi Planner release day.
Four hours. For a notebook.
The analog stationery comeback trend isn’t just a trend — it’s a full-blown consumer stampede, and it’s happening in real time across Chicago.
Here’s the link since credit matters: WBEZ’s original reporting.
The Screen Fatigue Is Real (And Profitable)
Atlas Stationers, a family-run Loop business founded in 1939, saw a 45% increase in sales in 2025. They’re now open seven days a week for the first time ever, averaging 300 customers daily.
Their second floor — previously office space — is now staffed by a 40-person team, including social media content creators.
The irony is thick: people are using TikTok and Instagram (Atlas alone has 262,000 followers) to discover ways to escape them. The algorithm is selling you the cure for the algorithm.
Julie Jachym, 28, told WBEZ she realized her life had become “very automated” — grocery delivery, Google Calendar invites, the whole frictionless nightmare. Her solution? A $70 Japanese planner and some washi tape.
“Being more analog with my life has been very helpful in being more mindful,” she said.
The Hobonichi Cult (And Yes, It’s a Cult)
Hobonichi Techo planners are Japanese-made notebooks that cost up to $70, with covers that can run over $150. They’re mentioned 1.5 million times on Instagram. People customize them with stickers, fountain pen ink, and the kind of devotion usually reserved for sneaker drops.
Paper & Pencil’s owners, Tyler McCall and Eric Campbell, opened their store in 2023, hesitant about launching a brick-and-mortar business post-pandemic. Within six months, they were profitable. By 2025, sales were up 150% year over year.
They also launched the Chicago Stationery Fest. The 1,700 tickets for the 2026 event sold out in 45 minutes. Not a concert. Not a limited-edition streetwear collab. Stationery vendors.
“People are looking to deepen their connection with themselves through something that’s real and tangible,” McCall said.
Translation: your phone has made you feel like a ghost, and now you’re willing to pay $150 for a fabric notebook cover to feel human again.
The “Journal Ecosystem” Economy
There’s now an entire subculture of content creators dedicated to showcasing elaborate journal setups. Shelby Zuba, a 28-year-old Rockford-based creator, maintains a “journal ecosystem” of four notebooks — including two Hobonichi planners. She spends one to three hours a day filling them out.
“I want my kids and grandkids to have my journals,” she told WBEZ.
Which is sweet — until you realize her grandkids will probably find them in a storage unit in 2070 and say, “What the hell is washi tape?”
But the hobby is real. Junk journaling (pasting ticket stubs, receipts, magazine clippings into notebooks) has become the scrapbooking of the 2020s. There are YouTube videos with hundreds of thousands of views showing people how to decorate their weekly planner spreads.
Samantha Rekas, founder of Paper Bunny Press, built an Etsy business selling snarky stickers (“grown-up Lisa Frank”) and is now opening a brick-and-mortar store in Lincoln Square next month. She’s sold over 5,500 calendars.
“Sometimes people just don’t have the time to sit every day to make their layouts,” she said. “So it’s nice to give people an option where it’s already done for them in like this colorful, chaotic way.”
Pre-designed chaos.
The Backlash to the Backlash
The stationery boom isn’t just about aesthetics or nostalgia — it’s a full-scale rejection of what digital life has become. Google Calendar invites. Automated grocery deliveries. Notifications that never stop. The friction has been sanded off everything, and it turns out friction was the only thing making life feel real.
Brendan Schmidt, co-owner of Atlas Stationers, said it plainly: “People really want to experience something tangible in a world that’s dominated by digital technology.”
And they’re willing to wait in line for it.
Ashley McCarl, 26, was shopping at Paper & Pencil for the first time. “I’m starting a journal. It’s my New Year’s resolution,” she said. “I’ve been watching videos all morning. I just want to do something creative that’s not on my phone.”
The algorithm taught her she was empty. Now she’s buying $70 notebooks to fill the void.