For students who are fans of vintage clothing, who love vinyl, like old comic books or are looking for an alternative to stores like Urban Outfitters, Athens Underground might be worth checking out.
Athens Underground, 90 N. Court St., is a vintage and antique shop that carries a wide range of clothing, music, books, magazines and accessories.
The owner of the store is Barbara Stout and she has been in the vintage business for 32 years. She grew up in Athens up until the time she finished college at Ohio University. After earning her degree, Stout ventured off to New York in hopes of becoming an actress. While there, she fell into the vintage business, and eventually in 1984 opened up her own shop called Alice Underground.
Around 2003, after the Athens property became vacant, she opened up the Athens Underground store. The first four years the store was open, Stout was still living in New York. Eventually, she bought a house and started back in Athens. One of the reasons she said she wanted to move the business back to Athens instead of New York was because there was too much competition and she felt like she’d have a better chance going against some of the smaller clothing shops here in Athens.
Stout said that less than 5 percent of the items for sale are actually donations. Most of the merchandise was bought and brought in by her at thrift stores, yard sales and auctions. Whatever she’d find she would buy, wash and introduce into the store.
Stout said the store has changed over time. In the beginning, just clothes were sold, but over time she started reducing the amount of clothing to be able to sell antiques and other items. At a certain point, she drastically decreased the amount of antiques because other items such as albums and literature were selling so much better.
While many would expect a vintage store to get busy during Halloween, Stout said the store’s busiest day was actually “Santa Fest.” While on Halloween the store still received a decent amount of business, the reason why it got so busy during Santa Fest was because many people were looking for cheesy Christmas sweaters. She also mentioned that the store had a lot of traffic during fest season because it was one of the best places to buy items like fanny packs, sunglasses and tie-dyes.
Hunter Mercer, an OU student, has shopped at Athens Underground a few times and called it one of the best vintage shops he’s ever been to. He said one of the things he liked about the store was that in comparison to something like Urban Outfitters he felt like all the clothes there are more authentic and not made to look a certain condition. He said one of the most interesting things he’d found there was a blue, red and white Pepsi hat that had “Athens, Ohio” on it.
Mercer said he enjoys the fact that “everything here feels like it has a past.”
