Meet The Attic: Where Good Community Never Goes Out of Style
This story is brought to you by: Sean Straub // Senior Real Estate Broker — Thinking of moving to Everett? Wanna know what your home might be worth? Feel free to reach out to Sean and his team.
Story & images by: Richard Porter.
Folks who visit Everett, Washington can find themselves adrift in time. The city’s infrastructure is a mixtape of decades and architectural styles. It’s a place where modern condos rub elbows with gothic modern office buildings; a downtown that doesn’t try to affect a vibe because it is a vibe.
Size-wise, Everett is somewhere between a big city and a small town. As a goldilocks city, it’s a true social ecosystem, where you can meet diverse people and professionally network, while still bumping into your friends at the grocery store.
Where’s The Attic? Look for the sign on Hewitt, between The Loft Bakeshop & Cafe and Sunken Ship Tattoo.
If these traits – a vintage aesthetic and strong community – define Everett at large, The Attic on Hewitt is the quintessential downtown business.
To find The Attic, you either need to know where to look (probably by word of mouth), or you need to find it by accident. Though their signage and street presence on Hewitt have evolved since opening eight months ago, this vintage shop is the kind of a place that tends to attract wanderers along Everett’s main drag.
The goods. A proper amount of stimulation.
Walk through Secondhand Antiques and find a neon-lit door in the back. Walk up a winding staircase, past 90s movie posters and band fliers, and you’ll emerge upstairs in a different world; a world filled with racks of clothing, raw particle-board floors, string lights, shelves and lockers full of stacked denim. It’s a world filled with stimulation, but is (and this is a difficult balance to strike), not overstimulating.
The Attic sells clothes, yes, but also buttons, scarves, hats, jerseys, VHS tapes, DVDs, CDs, cassettes, vinyl, handbags, scarves, and jewelry. All of it is carefully curated, so you don’t have to dive through dozens of duds or less-than-gem pieces to surface real retro fashion treasure.
Do you love it yet? Of course you do.
The ten-plus vendors at The Attic curate hip fashion to a t(-shirt).
And the owners want you to stay awhile.
“This is a place where you can literally hang out all day,” says co-owner Miles, gesturing to a 1970s-looking couch and coffee table in the corner. “There’s stuff to read, stuff to see – we want visitors to connect to the community and leave with the best experience they can.”
Miles and co-founder Cooper began their venture in a booth downstairs at Secondhand Antiques. One day the owner mentioned that there was an entire upstairs of the building that was going unused. And in that moment, The Attic was born.
Your next vintage find lives here.
Cooper and Miles soon gathered their community and network into the upstairs; friends who sewed, friends who collected, friends who made jewelry and screen printed. The result is what you see today: a place featuring over ten vendors, where Y2K skater fashion thrives next to #gorpcore, deadstock vintage jerseys, no-joke Filson, upcycled distressed workwear, and hair metal band tees.
Candidly, I actually think some of this vintage stuff is on the cringey side, which speaks to the intergenerational taste of the curators. My kids (Gen Alpha) seem to be attracted to flared cargo pants, bucket hats, and tiny denim purses – articles and accessories in which I don’t particularly see value, having lived through the actual Willennium.
But I take that as a good thing. After all, I’m a Millennial approaching middle age. The Gen Z owners of The Attic are the tastemakers here and theirs is a generation that can mishmash styles quicker than Kenderick Lamar can drop bars.
I still find plenty of durable woolen goodies here for my more Nordic, minimalistic look. The kids are alright.
The Attic is one of my favorite places to go downtown these days. I’m starting to think that my love for this vintage shop is somewhat conflated with my love of Everett at large. In a working-class city of artists, the values of upcycling, making do, pooling resources, and doing your own thing in a timeless way have always appealed to me. That’s why I live here, TBH. I want to live in a circular economy of peers trying to create something. I want to be in places just off the beaten path.
Like a classic leather jacket, distressed denim, or a Breton striped shirt, good community never goes out of style.
Visit The Attic >> On IG @theatticonhewitt
1307 Hewitt Ave // Downtown Everett
Open Daily from 10:00-6:00
Richard Porter is a marketer for Snohomish County’s Executive Office by day, and a freelance writer. He lives with his wife and daughters in Everett. When he’s not writing or drinking coffee, he’s probably binging podcasts while running or hiking.
