By Zach Mosca
Youngstown-based business Westside Vintage will have a new home in downtown Youngstown, occupying the building that formerly housed Greyland Gallery.
According to Westside Vintage co-owner Alexis Sarty, while she loved the previous location across from Westside Bowl on Mahoning Avenue, she feels that downtown is a more accessible location for the business.
“Downtown’s a better location. They just finished that promenade — they’re doing a lot of stuff down there to ensure that not only is the housing happening at a very quick pace between students at [Youngstown State University], but there’s a lot of other things that have been talked about and deals that have been done to get Youngstown back to the great little city it was,” Sarty said.
Westside Vintage offers a variety of goods for customers, such as vinyl records, vintage clothing, furniture, art, antiques and more.
YSU alumna Rose Rivera is a frequent patron of Westside Vintage, as she is a major supporter of small businesses in the Youngstown area — especially when it comes to clothing. Always on the lookout for new places to shop, she said it’s important to her to shop secondhand.
“I’m always looking for new places to shop because I personally haven’t purchased any type of apparel from major corporations, so it’s very important for me to shop secondhand,” Rivera said. “It’s a little harder to find certain pieces when you’re going to your average thrift stores, and so vintage stores are a little more honed-in on specific styles, so I also try to seek that out because they have really unique, original pieces.”
Rivera went on to say she believes the move to downtown will make it easier for YSU students to access the shop now that it’s closer to campus and in turn, can generate more business.
“I think that the downtown area will be much more accessible to college students who are kind of landlocked at YSU or don’t know much about the community on Mahoning,” Rivera said.
In addition to relocating, the business will rebrand from Westside to Greyland as a tribute to the store Westside Vintage co-owner Rocco Strait once owned.
“I have two other partners, and when we decided about the move and everything we thought it would be best to revive the Greyland name … It’s a name that kind of represents Youngstown for a lot of us for how we see it. I always say Youngstown’s kind of like this dead space. We always try to get stuff going on and everything like that, so it’s kind of like an ode to Youngstown being called Greyland,” Sarty said.
Once the moving process is finished and the Greyland Vintage opens, Sarty has high hopes for the future. Now that there is more space to work with, Greyland can offer a wider selection with more curated items than before.
“Between the three of us we have much more. We’re all collectors, we’re all buyers, we’re all sellers — so we’ll have a lot more of a selection going on for the future,” Sarty said.
In addition, the new location will keep the Greyland Gallery spirit going by offering live music, with proper COVID-19 safety procedures in place.
“We’d like it to be not only a retail space, but a venue as well,” Sarty said.
Greyland Vintage is set to open to the public in mid-May. Anyone interested in updates on the reopening can follow Westside Vintage on Facebook or Instagram.
