Downtown Auburn is best known for its outlet mall and not much else, but venturing a little further into the heart of the small city, it houses several hidden gems that are worth checking out. 

Klay Crazy Ceramics sits on a residential corner, with its main wall facing a busy highway, with the unpainted pottery pieces rattling on their shelves as cars cruise by. It’s a charming building, painted baby blue on the inside, and smelling sweetly of stale paint and unbaked clay. 

Klay Crazy allows you to pick out a piece of unpainted pottery and either take it home or paint it in the building, with a slight price increase for the cost of supplies used. The pottery ranges from large vases, mugs, small figurines, or full size scenes. 

There’s a fair share of friendly regulars that you can count on to welcome you into a conversation and give you tips on how to make your pottery look the best possible. It’s a perfect activity for a rainy day that results in a new bookshelf decoration or a thoughtful, handmade present for any upcoming birthdays. 

Another great spot is PNW Coffee Co which offers a wide variety of breakfast and lunch items as well as novelty coffee flavors and in-house pastries. The exterior is decorated with hand drawn window decorations and seasonal garlands. 

Decorated with plush chairs and using a large leather couch as the anchor point of the lobby, the coffee shop encourages you to sit and enjoy your coffee as the fireplace creates a cozy atmosphere. With woodsy accents and a fair amount of green, the coffee shop lives up to its name with the Pacific Northwest vibes. 

As one holiday passes and another approaches, PNW Coffee Co updates their specialty coffee list with themed drinks and seasonal flavors. Along with the coffee, their pastries reflect the season with frosted cookies and cake pops decorated to fit the upcoming holiday.  

The sandwiches and breakfast burritos are packed with fresh ingredients and made to order, making them well worth the price of just over ten dollars. With a long list of flavor options, their coffee is fully customizable and encourages experimentation.  

Moving right along, Main Street Thrift at first glance is a small second-hand clothing store but as you venture further in, it expands rapidly into a large closet of your choosing. The thrift store offers options to build each category of your wardrobe, with large racks of shirts, pants, dresses, skirts, jackets and shoes scattered throughout the store. 

The store is bursting with personality and there’s endless decorations to look at as you peruse the clothes. The owner has novelty shirts hanging along the walls, not for sale, but you’re going to wish they were. One such shirt declares the idea that “Virginity is Curable” while another has Steve Buscemi’s character in “Reservoir Dogs” drawn as a scrawny cat. 

Among these decorations are various posters that often sync up with the music being played in-store. Jim Morrison and The Offspring watch you paw through the racks as Elvis and Billy Idol play over the speakers. The owners’ dogs nap serenely near the register and receives a fair amount of crooning from the customers and employees alike. 

The thrift store also offers all manner of accessories ranging from belts to beanies to jewelry. There’s an impressive collection of well maintained CDs and used books, tucked away into bookshelves scattered around the large space. 

Main Street Thrift runs a fifty-percent off sale on the entire store every first weekend of the month. With the prices already being affordable, this is a sale that you will not want to miss. 

Next on our list is Oddfellas pub and eatery, it sits on the corner of Main and A Street. The menu is split between traditional pub food, such as loaded burgers and mac & cheese, and Irish delicacies such as schnitzel or Irish nachos. 

It has the feeling of a true pub, with a large menu of lagers and a curved wooden bar. The menu is invitingly crass in a stereotypically Irish way, with a berry lemonade being listed as a “threesome” lemonade and a “Burgasm” that recommends a cigarette as a dessert.  

Additional menu items are a “WTF wrap” loaded with fried cod, pico de gallo, and wasabi slaw. Or an order of cheesy biscuits with a dill pickle seasoning that forces you to ask for a side of “Dill Doughs”. As humbling as it may be to order, the biscuits that come with a side of strawberry jam are more than worth the name.   

All within five minutes of each other, these businesses could serve as an entire day of exploration or a treat for anytime you find yourself near downtown Auburn.