South Shore Vintage will be opening Saturday, Nov. 12, in Patchogue Village, but the boutique shop’s origins can be traced to a pivotal moment in Bayport last October.
Elizabeth Plotz was being forced to move from her mother’s garage.
“It kind of evolved,” said Plotz, 32, who now lives in Ronkonkoma. “It started in my mom’s garage and then she sold her house, so I had to find a place to continue it.”
Her mom had downsized to an apartment. “And of course, she moved again,” into another house, Plotz laughed.
In the meantime, Elizabeth Plot’z online business kept growing and with that, the Bayport-Blue Point High School graduate had to move from one office/storage facility to the next, all in Nesconset.
“I kept outgrowing the space,” she said.
This September she found a place in Patchogue, at 76 North Ocean Avenue, just north of Reese’s 1900 Pub, in a former bookshop.
She’s spent the last few weeks stocking and furnishing the store.
advertisement
Plotz, who went to school for interior design and had grown up “thrifting,” with her parents, describes her collection of furniture, paintings and other home furnishings as eclectic.
With an emphasis on eclectic.
“It’s like, all over the place,” she said. “Nautical, bohemian … but I love mid-century modern.”
In describing mid-century modern to the uninitiated, she tells people to think of AMC show Mad Men.
That means many of the people around today grew up with this type of furnishings.
Plotz is expecting to draw from a wide range of ages.
“It will likely be people who are my age and have an apartment, to people who are a little bit older who maybe come in and see something they had when they were younger,” she said. “They’ll say, ‘Hey that’s cool; I can have it again!’”
Though she’s long dreamed of opening a shop, it helped that many of her online customers had encouraged her to go for it.
“It’s been in the back of my head,” she said. “I had moved into a bigger office after maybe just six months, and people would come to pick things up and see all the stuff in the store.
“Then they would say, ‘This is so cool; we’d like to come and just shop.’”
Now they can.
South Shore Vintage’s noon to 6 p.m. grand opening party Saturday is open to the public. The store, located at 76 North Ocean Avenue, will be closed Mondays and Tuesdays, open 11-7 Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and noon to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and Sunday.
click here for more North Ocean coverage
Top photo: Elizabeth Plotz at her South Shore Vintage store in Patchogue, N.Y.
(Credit: Benny Migliorino/Benny Migs Photo)
