Wednesday, December 17, 2014

All in a Day's Work - Chapter 1

Jane from Mercantile Republic trying on the forbidden hat
Jane and the forbidden hat
Peeps are always asking us "What do you guys do all day?"  It's almost as if they don't believe there's work involved in building a vintage clothing business.  Well there IS a ton of work...but there's also a ton of fun.  And by fun, I mean high jinx, antics and the occasional mishap.

Today, Jane and I decided to visit a local vintage retailer I've heard great things about.  For some reason, we've never quite had a chance to visit; mainly due to the odd hours the guy keeps.  But we were lucky today!  The place is of course gorgeous; like walking into a time capsule.  There's Louis Armstrong playing on an old turntable.  He's got Miracle on 34th Street projected onto a wall.  It really is everything.

I yell across the store "Gurl! They've got hats over here!"  The word "hats" is a trigger word for Jane.  She can't resist them.  She has to put them on.  Some are outrageous and fun.  Some are bugged.  But we have fun taking pictures of her in the hats (maybe I'll post another time).  This day was no different, but wait stick a pin in it right here.  I'll come back to this...

You see, in this business; the vintage business,  there are a lot of...how can I say this without sounding mean.  There are a lot of...characters.  And if there's one thing Jane and I love, it's characters and you could tell the owner of this particular place took great care in creating a certain ambiance.  We totally get it.  In fact we honor and appreciate it. So the point I'm trying to make (not sure how successful I am at actually accomplishing that), is that we like to meet like-minded "characters" like ourselves.  But just when we thought we'd found a new friend...

Fast forward or backwards or wherever the pin was where I yelled across the store.

Jane comes running over to the hat section and starts doing her thang.  Tryin' on this one and that one.  We laugh and joke.  She makes her way over to one tucked away in the corner.  She tries it on.  We decide it's picture worthy and I snap the shot (seen above).  We giggle some more and then out of no where the shop owner appears and ever so gently (with a slight hint of panic), he removes the hat from her head.  "This is a museum piece", he says.  "OH!", Jane and I sing simultaneously. "Sooooowwwwyyyy!!".  "There was a sign", he smirks. We apologize again.  Hmmm.  I'm not sure we did.  We probably did.  Who knows, but from that point on the tension was thick,  So we pretended to browse some more and quickly got out of dodge.  He wanted nothing more to do with us.

Needless to say, this is now the 2nd (or is it the 3rd?) store to which we can't go back.  DAMN!  He had nice stuff!

All in a day's work...

Peace
TheKatalist