Feb 9, 2014

Longview Woman Scours Northwest to Stock Shop of Rare FindsBy Sarah GrothjanTDN.com

Longview, WA – At the Washington County Fairgrounds in Hillsboro, Ore., shopping disciples crowd a warehouse rife with more than 80 vendors selling vintage wares. It’s a well-stocked repository of stained mason jars, rusted skeleton keys and well-loved furniture.

Bonnie Hall scans the vendor lineup, her shopping strategy a calculated scavenger hunt for items to fill gaps in the shelves of her recently opened vintage shop, Revival Creek. The store, a new fixture on Vandercook Way, is one of several shops in Longview that houses treasures of yesteryear. A bulb-lined star sits behind the storefront’s glass exterior opposite old Shell and Texaco signs. Inside, an assortment of repurposed file cabinets, several mason jars, candy jars filled with gumballs and a buffalo head mounted above several elk sheds are a few of the items that line the shop’s periphery.

“Do you know what these are?” a vendor in Hillsboro asks Bonnie, who answers no. “Me either!” The two laugh as they drop metal knob-like finds into a paper bag. Bonnie rejoins the flowing crowd of shoppers toward the next line of vendors. The warehouse can be likened to a maze, hedged by booths stockpiled so high it’s difficult to see those grouped in other parts of the building. People fawn over everything from vintage bottle caps to worn leather purses with drooping flaps. After all, everything old is new again, and no one knows this better than the vendors themselves.

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