New gift store opens in previous JJ Blinkers area in downtown Antioch
Following JJ Blinkers, the self-described rubber hen retailer in downtown Antioch, closed last November after 35 many years, Debbie Winkler determined to double down on her expenditure in the spot.
She experienced opened the Rustic and Reclaimed Marketplace close by on Major Road in 2018, presenting classic residence furnishings in a “fashionable farm residence” fashion. But one more notion persisted.
“I have normally wished to open up a present shop,” she stated Friday. And exactly where better than the previous Blinkers house, the place her young ones employed to go to, she reasoned.
“It was important for me to open up a store (here) because JJ Blinkers was these kinds of a staple in Antioch,” Winkler claimed. “It is my aspiration store.”
She commenced renovating the house earlier this 12 months and has routinely been submitting updates and pictures of the progress on the businesses’ Fb web page.
With Saturday’s grand opening looming, preparations ongoing to the wire Friday and Winkler nonetheless experienced a checklist of tasks. Employees have been setting up new front windows as Winkler and her workers readied merchandise for the cabinets and tended to other details.

























“That’s my lifetime, nevertheless,” she laughed. “But it really is constantly worked out.”
The opening coincides with the Antioch’s Summer season Wine Wander. Winkler will have an acoustic band enjoying and an ice cream truck on hand.
The native of Brazil attained her business enterprise degree in Denver and master’s in Boca Raton, Florida. She moved to Antioch 18 many years back when her then spouse was transferred to Motorola’s facility in Libertyville.
She explained Vintage Mercantile as an industrial-fashion reward/attire/equipment shop with one of a kind, entertaining and tricky-to-locate products.
“My concentration is to operate with small-batch mom-and-pop artisans from close to the U.S.,” Winkler claimed. “I have things that are handmade from California to Maine.”
Quite a few of the “show scenarios” are repurposed antiques and collectibles with their have tales. Amid them are a convert-of-the-century grain separator, a cupboard extended ago applied to sort mail in New York, an outdated container for components with 350 bins, and a 12-foot-large by 10-foot-tall workbench built of barn wood.
“I did maintain the JJ Blinkers counter for good luck,” she said.
The 1,500-square-foot area was remodeled with new flooring and lights as properly as clean paint inside and out.
Vintage Mercantile is not the only downtown company with a new glimpse.
What is regarded as the Klein developing has been given a facade improvement, and the Vegas Cafe has gone through a restoration. Which is returned the historic look of two Principal Avenue buildings, according to Michael Garrigan, the village’s group improvement director.
Winkler is leasing the floor ground of what experienced been separate spaces in the 1910 building with a funeral parlor as soon as occupying the northern 50 percent of the making.
Products retained receiving misplaced in the shuffle in the course of the renovation, and Winkler claimed she heard a story a several months back that may perhaps present an explanation.
“They say there are pleasant ghosts listed here,” Winkler reported. “I was advised points vanish or are moved.”
