BORN, LIVE, DEATH, REBIRTH!

As the end of our first year in business arrives I have been reflecting on the long road with the many twists and turns it took to get here.

When we first started looking for a location we thought we might want it to be in an old house. I imagined an old witch's cottage with a maze of rooms dividing the different sections of the shop.

If you know Galveston you might remember the old Jewels & Junque shop on Broadway. I thought the location was perfect and the price was surely right. I just didn't know what kind of shape it was in because it was stuffed from floor to ceiling with (yes...you guessed it) junk. I contracted to do the clean-up before the purchase so we could do a proper inspection. It took nine 40 yard dumpsters to empty the house and we didn't find one "jewel" except the house itself which we began to restore right away.

As the project was nearing completion we inherited some money and began to think about moving the location downtown. This coincided with an offer on the house, so we took the money and ran...only to find out that there was practically nothing for sale to fit our needs. The only thing left to do was lease a space and (wow!) downtown is NOT cheap! Unless you go a little off the beaten path and then the price drops in half!

And you might have to do a little work. At least that's the line I sold to my wife (again). "We can fix it!" It just takes money. And did we spend some money!

Four to five months later we had rehabbed someone else's building! We actually opened the shop July 1, 2008 and business was great! "Finally," everyone was saying, "a real new age shop in Galveston!" We spared no expense. The place was 3200 square feet of metaphysical madness! We exhausted every vendor we could find to fill the shelves of this enormous space.

Shortly after opening, the owner of the building moved tenants upstairs with disastrous results. There was no insulation and you could hear everything going on including children running, loud music and finally their dogs were urinating and it ran through the floor boards into our shop! I was at my wits end and offered to buy the building, but was denied. All I wanted was to have control of my environment. And then about ten weeks into it a Hurricane was forming in the Gulf. It had been a busy storm season and I had already cut the plywood to fit the windows and filled over two hundred sand bags stored behind the building. We went through the routine of boarding up and stacking the sand bags in case we had a little high water. No one ever predicted what happened.

Over 100 mph winds and eight feet of water had it's way with us and destroyed all of our hard work!

It took 24 hours for the water to recede and when I was finally able to make it to the shop this is what I found. Utter chaos!

Everything was covered with muck and it smelled horrendous! The only thing to do was start cleaning up. Which we did with the help of some good friends.

As the people of Galveston started to assess the damage from Hurricane Ike many decided not to rebuild and suddenly a handful of desirable buildings were for sale. I had asked my friend Maureen a couple of years before the storm, if she ever wanted to sell her building, to call me and she finally did. I actually entered into contract on three buildings downtown before deciding on Maureen's which happened to be the old Central Drug Store. The size was right, the price was right, and all we needed to do was a little work. At least that's the line I sold to my wife (again). "We can fix it!" But this time it was the perfect location and it was ours!

Well, you know the rest of the story. We opened again at our new location August 22, 2009, and we've had an amazing year! You know what they say, "Be careful what you wish for...you just might get it!" We got it, but the Universe made us work for it!