We would like to acknowledge that the land on which Two Dollar Radio Headquarters is located is the contemporary territory of the Shawnee, Miami, and Hopewell Nations,* which comprised some of the roughly 80,000 Indigenous people forcibly displaced from their ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi River** through the Indian Removal Act of 1830. We would like to pay our respects as well as honor the culture, heritage, and resiliency of these and other Indigenous nations with strong ancestral ties to these lands, as well as individuals from Indigenous backgrounds in our community who continue to call central Ohio home.
* Source: https://native-land.ca/
** Source: https://estoo-nsn.gov/educators-guide/movement/
*** Source: https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/indian-treaties
**** Source: https://nativegov.org/a-guide-to-indigenous-land-acknowledgment/
Two Dollar Radio Headquarters (HQ), a locally owned and operated family-run shop, is an indie bookstore, performance space, bar, coffeehouse, and fully vegan cafe located on South Side of Columbus, Ohio. Our family-friendly space offers comfy seating. As a bookshop, we carry an exciting, carefully curated list of titles almost exclusively devoted to independently published literature. Our bar serves cocktails, wine, and draft beer, and our cafe serves locally roasted coffee, house-made vegan meats and cheezes, sandwiches, salads, pizzas, dips, and more. Our performance space features a wide range of offerings from panel discussions, local and touring author readings, musicians, magicians, trivia, themed storytelling, poetry open mics, and more!
"With the September [2017] addition of Two Dollar Radio publishing house’s South Side headquarters, the nationally renowned independent press branched out into the hospitality business. Offering an ambience that reflects the excellent taste prevalent in the books the little company puts out, Two Dollar Radio Headquarters is a multi-function space that’s as much cafe, bar and restaurant as it is book shop, meeting place and art gallery." —G.A. Benton, COLUMBUS ALIVE MAGAZINE (June 13, 2018)
^ Co-owners Brett Gregory, Eliza Wood-Obenauf, and Eric Obenauf in the newly leased HQ space on Parsons Ave, June 2017.
Our History
Two Dollar Radio Headquarters is the brick-and-mortar of indie publisher Two Dollar Radio. Two Dollar Radio was founded in 2005 by Eric Obenauf and Eliza Wood-Obenauf, a husband-and-wife team with a love of books. The original impetus to start our own indie book publishing company, fresh out of college, came on the heels of reading Andre Schiffrin's The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read. Since then, we've published 5-6 books each year, some of which have been turned into films, honored by the National Book Foundation, finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, picked as "Editors' Choice" selections by The New York Times Book Review, and made year-end best-of lists at O, The Oprah Magazine, NPR, The Washington Post, Slate, Salon, The Believer, Chicago Tribune, Rolling Stone, San Francisco Chronicle, and others.
In 2013 we added a film production arm, Moving Pictures, and have so far produced two micro-budget feature films. In 2017 we founded The Flyover Fest, an inclusive, fresh annual 3-day festival in the North Campus and South Clintonville neighborhoods of Columbus, Ohio, engaging the city, stimulating creativity, and sparking conversation.
And then, also in 2017, after operating Two Dollar Radio out of our living room for 12 years, and with lots of help and planning, we expanded into a retail space on the South Side of Columbus, Ohio, and named it Two Dollar Radio Headquarters! Our motivation to open a brick-and-mortar came from a desire to interact with our broader community of book lovers here in the Midwest, to be able to provide a cozy meeting and performance space, and to encourage the reading not only of our books, but of exciting, stellar work being published by other independent presses from around the country and abroad.
Our passion extends to food and drink, which led us to develop a zesty, zingy, highly curated, fully vegan cafe, coffee, and bar menu. Read more about our cafe and view menus here.
Come say hey!
Local partners
For our bathrooms and kitchen, we use the foaming hand soap from family-run, Grandview Heights neighborhood-based GLENN AVE SOAP, handcrafted from 100% organic oils with pure essential plant oils and extracts. Our freshly made tortillas come from KOKI'S TORTILLAS in the Hilltop neighborhood. Our delicious vegan desserts come from HAPPY LITTLE TREATS, a locally owned vegan bakery that was formerly named “The Angry Baker” as well as DOUGHASIS, from Granville, Ohio. Our vegan breads come from HAPPY LITTLE TREATS and LUCKY CAT BAKERY, a local company producing high-quality artisan breads. And our delicious coffee is from ONE LINE, a family-run business from Heath, Ohio, with an emphasis on flavor, quality, sustainability, and traceability. We currently compost all of our food scraps and coffee grounds ourselves, in our Southern Orchards back yard.
^ Owner Eric Obenauf building the bar stools from reclaimed wood found in Clintonville, July 2017.
^ Owners Eric Obenauf and Brett Gregory with the brand new espresso machine, August 2017.
^ Owner Eliza Wood-Obenauf painting Eric Obenauf's original unicorn mural art, September 2017.
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