GypsyGrace and The VintageGoat

Vintage inspired custom pieces – We sell weird stuff, cool junk, retro, odd but not obsolete and custom items. We are located at 451 W Market St in Akron, Ohio. Stop by, we have something for everyone.

CUSTOM ITEMS

Have a one-of-a-kind light fixture you want built? Stop into Gypsy Grace & the Vintage Goat to tell us about your design. Just to give you an idea, we have built amazing light fixtures out of the following items:

• Bed Frames
• Sewing Machines
• Cameras
• Kegs
• Cheese Graters
• Duct Pipe
• Wire

Whatever you come up with, we can probably build it. We also sell Edison bulbs if you want to make an existing light fixture more interesting.

OUR STORY

GYPSY GRACE – Angel Grace

VINTAGE GOAT – Joe Scheibe “recently earmarked the Vintage Goat”.

I have always had a love of anything creative and art in any form that can be created. I was in the auto collision industry repairing and painting cars and trucks. I did this since 1988-1999 in local dealerships in Stark County. I opened my own collision repair and painting shop in 2000 called Middlebranch Collision Center. Middebranch was and still is a successful collision repair shop in Plain Township. I came to a point in my career in 2005 where I asked myself if this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I have been very successful repairing and painting cars, but I had an itch to do something different.

My solution was to sell the business, enlist into the Ohio Army National Guard and attend school to be a Civil Engineer. With a plan I started to make arrangements to implement it. I checked into the National Guard and found out the maximum enlistment age was 35. Currently being 34 I knew I was running out of time. I placed the business up for sale and by the time I found a buyer and worked with him to transition the business and the employees I was 35. I was too old to enlist into the National Guard. I continued with my plan of direction and enrolled in college and studied Civil Engineering for the next 2 years. Low and behold the National Guard raised the maximum enlistment age to 42. I kicked it around and realized if I didn’t do it I would regret it and always wish I would have. If it wasn’t what I liked I would have served my country and community and could move on to the next adventure. I enlisted at 37 and went to Basic Training for 6 months. After training I was connected to a unit that was scheduled to deploy to Iraq in 10 months. Being between semesters and thinking who is going to hire me knowing I was set to leave for a year long deployment I was given active duty orders with the recruiting command. I worked with recruiting for the 10 months up to my deployment. Off to Iraq for 12 months, building perimeter walls and housing barriers. Returning from Iraq I realized I waned to continue wearing my uniform so I applied for a position in Recruiting and left again for 2 months for training.

For the last 6 years I have been enlisting young men and women into the National Guard. That itch has come back to do something different. Back to something artistic and creative. While recruiting I had become friends with Angel, her son enlisted with me into the Guard and she became a close friend with a mutual interest in vintage junk. Late September we were looking at the building to purchase it and there was a retail space coming available in October. We discussed a store offering vintage junk which seemed to become a new passion for me. Well October 1 came and we were in the storefront tearing out years of remodeling and building supplies that have covered up the character of the building. November 4th we opened the doors to showcase our idea of a vintage store.

Over the last 5 months we have fully embraced the local community and the huge number of talented artists from the area, Gypsy Grace and the Vintage Goat has taken on so much more than a store for things we think are cool, hoping other people do as well. It has become a place of gathering for artists, musicians, comedians, readers, poets, performers of all types and variety. I have heard tens of dozens of times of how someone was just drawn into the store.

Akron is truly a community full of multi-talented people with a passion to express themselves with some type of art form. I am excited that Angel and I can provide a place for such talent to showcase their passion and inspiration to others in the community.