The Lightbulb Lady

So maybe I’m the only person in Portland who didn’t know about the Lightbulb Lady. But, man, I meet a lot of people and she is one of the most interesting I’ve ever met so I need to post about her.

The Lightbulb Lady is Kay Newell and she sits all day behind the low counter of SunLan Lighting, a store on N Mississippi that sells only light bulbs. Thousands of light bulbs. When I ducked inside her door on Wednesday afternoon, there was barely space for me to fit between the twisted, colorful light bulb counter displays and the store’s ceiling-high racks of light bulb boxes. Newell shouted out to me immediately from her nest among the lightbulb towers, “How many I illuminate you today?” This made me think she was crazy, so I decided to try conversation.

“How did you get started selling light bulbs?” I asked.
“Working for a thief!” responded Kay, launching into a confusing but impassioned tale in which she eventually outsmarted a tricksy light bulb vendor who stole commissions and cheated customers. I realized very quickly that Newell is not crazy. She has just found her calling and her calling is lightbulbs. Customers came into the store, one after another, all clutching receipts and Post-It notes written in obscure light bulb jargon. Encouraged by her disarmingly horrible puns, they would timidly handed the scrap over the counter to Newell and she always instantly deciphered the code. “You’re looking for an FCS, go to the back, right over there,” she spouted off, lifting a large arm and picking out one shelf from the labyrinth of stacked bulb boxes.

SunLan is where people come to buy novelty Christmas lights, lights for bizarre needs like a tiki bar’s blown-up puffer fish fixtures, “artisan light bulbs” featured in glossy home magazines. But Newell’s adamant about her favorites. “Go down there and turn that one on,” she says, gesturing toward the closest aisle, which is already occupied by two middle-aged women ooing and awing over the display: full spectrum lighting designed to mimic sunlight. “That’s the bulb that the Finnish invented to combat depression!” Newell calls out, “These are bulbs that actually change the way people live!”

Newell points at the giant clear bulbs displayed above the front window. “Have you ever seen those before?” she asked. I shake my head. “Yes you have! You see them everyday but you’ve never seen the bulb! They’re streetlights.” The phone rings again and she handles their questions — it’s the Portland Spirit cruise ship calling — before returning to me. “People find it just fascinating in here because they see the light for the first time. Some people see the light in here!” Newell pauses, letting the pun lie there for a bit. “And I have fun because how many dumb jokes have I told in the last half an hour? They’re all dumb and people giggle.”

I asked if she was worried about getting priced out of Mississippi — from inside SunLan I could hear the noise of the two condo construction sites on the block. Newell shook her head, explaining her financial stability, “Today’s world is changing lightbulbs. All the bulbs behind me, you can’t go to the regular store and buy.” There are hundreds and hundreds of bulbs behind her.