Apr 13, 2009

Meet Your Merchant: The Gray GooseBy Paul MatsonTheUnion.com

Stuey Weills’ Nevada City roots run deep. There are traces of them just across the street from her Broad Street business and others etched in stone at the grave sites of her great- grandparents, buried at the North Bloomfield cemetery.

“I have a very special relationship with this town,” said Weills. “Especially when I realize I can go to the cemetery and see my great-grandparents.”

The Gray Goose was originally located on Commercial Street, where Weills purchased the business some 20 years ago (she’d worked at the store prior to buying it).

Levity best describes The Gray Goose business philosophy. “We are introducing fun, new products all the time,” said Weills, “including a special section of the store for Mexican folk art, ranging from very moderately priced items to pieces created by some of the region’s best artists.”

And it may be the only place around where you can find squirrel underpants.

The shop at 230 Broad St. — with old wooden floors moved there years ago from a Rough and Ready barn — is owned by Weills’ longtime family friends Kay and Ken Baker.

“My mother and Carl Baker were buddies,” she said. “When I look out my front window across the street at Harmony Books, I think of my grandmother, Elizabeth Davis, who was born in Relief Hill in 1886. She worked at Colley’s Ice Cream, Tomales and the Drug Store, where Harmony Books is today.”

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