After a year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and protests for racial equality, shopping locally has become increasingly important – specifically, in support of small business owners of color. Marquette students can support these businesses and try something new by safely giving them a visit.
From vintage T-shirts to art classes, Milwaukee has a wide variety of stores that not only provide consumers with new experiences but also bring a sense of community to the city.
Vibez is in the Sherman Phoenix hub, located at 3536 W Fond Du Lac Ave., which features mostly Black-owned businesses. Chrishella Roché, the owner of Vibez Creative Arts Space, used art as a form of healing after spending three years in Abu Dhabi away from her family and friends back in Milwaukee.
“Our goal is to be a space where the community can come together and kind of heal. It doesn’t matter how old you are or how young you are,” Roché says.
Vibez Creative Arts Space is a hub for art including painting, pottery, and writing. In a typical year, Vibez usually offers in-person classes and parties. Right now, the business is focusing on selling work from local artists and doing virtual classes for all people, regardless of age or skill level. In fact, Vibez is the only art space in Milwaukee that does not have an age requirement.
To Roché, age does not define a person’s abilities.
“Art is not so subjective to just kids or just adults, you know, like it can be everybody – young people or seasoned people,” Roché says. “It’s for everybody, and it’s all in the eye of the beholder.”
Like Vibez, All Goods MKE also values community. Located at 1411 S 72nd Street in West Allis, All Goods MKE is a modern thrift store that specializes in vintage tees and hoodies. Owner Ali Acevedo places high importance on the community and his customers as a way to bring a “good” vibe to Milwaukee.
“The store name, ‘All Goods’ means a few things,” Acevedo says. “It means I have a little bit of everything, right? But I also want people to play on the saying, you know, it’s ‘all good.’ I want people to feel good.”
Just as the name suggests, Acevedo aspires to give his customers a unique experience each visit, along with fair prices.
“I feel like being really generous with the pricing and just allowing people access to stuff that they normally wouldn’t have, specifically in Milwaukee as well, because we really don’t have many stores in the whole state that are similar to this,” Acevedo says. “I think of it like a modern version of, like, Plato’s Closet or Buffalo Exchange.”
While All Goods favors vintage tees and hoodies, sneaker shop Deadstock is the number one place to get the coolest kicks in Milwaukee. Brothers Yaz and Mohammad Hamed opened Deadstock, located at 7009 S. 27th St. in Franklin, to supply sneakerheads with rare sneakers and streetwear.
“The name Deadstock comes from the sneaker culture. It means brand new and never worn,” Mohammad says. “So when someone says a shoe is a deadstock and they post it on Facebook or Craigslist, anytime you see that word, that means it’s a brand new shoe, never worn. We aim to be kind of the most high-end of the shoe stores.”
Cream City Print Lounge, owned by Rachaad Howard, is another example of one of these novelty shops. Cream City Print is an interactive retail studio, located at 8010 W. National Ave, West Allis where customers can come and print their own T-shirts as well as host printing parties. Howard has printed for over ten years and has even had some of the store’s original prints sold in large retail stores such as Kohl’s. Howard’s printed shirts feature sayings such as “peace, love, equality” and “Black culture is not a trend” as a result of the death of George Floyd.
“When the George Floyd situation happened, we decided we needed to spread the word,” Howard says. “Once that happened, Kohl’s reached out to us and said, ‘hey, can you help us get the line out as well?’ so I created a lot of those for them as well.”
This story was written by Reese Seberg. She can be reached at [email protected].