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Classic vintage menswear meets skate gear at a new Brunswick street boutique

Photos: Steve Gold

To break up the long drives he would regularly make between New Jersey and Michigan, North Carolina and Maine for his job as a skate shoe sales rep for Converse, Chase Whitaker took up thrift shopping. He would stop at vintage shops, antique stores, flea markets or anything that just seemed interesting enough to curb the monotony of driving.

Over time, Whitaker, a 29-year-old Harsimus Cove resident and 14-year veteran of the skateboard industry, had amassed such a collection of vintage menswear, military tchotchkes, and taxidermied ornamental animals, that he decided it was time to shift gears, as it were, and create a shop of his own.

“I had so much good stuff that wasn’t my size, that I was buying anyway and bringing back to my apartment, I decided to get a store and sell some of it,” he says as we sit inside Holmes & Co. Outfitters, a boutique on Brunswick Street featuring Whitaker’s vintage curations, as well as current items and supplies from select skateboard brands.

Holmes, which Whitaker runs with his roommate and fellow skate sales rep David Brancato, 27, opened its doors in late March. Think of it as a boutique and social club for the maturing skate set.

“We have a lot of friends who are getting older, into their 20s and 30s, who don’t want to dress like they’re teenagers anymore,” Whitaker says.

Other than a few select skate shoes and shirts, Holmes’ clothing stock is entirely classic vintage American men’s brands like Polo, Woolrich, Pendeleton, Levi’s, and LaCoste. There are couture items from Yves Saint Laurent and Dior in the mix, vintage wallets, sunglasses and Zippo lighters, and even accoutrements for the grown-up apartment, like antique globes and stuffed and mounted partridges (“All offers are welcome,” Whitaker says about the taxidermy items).

The store’s display area, featuring walls papered with vintage magazine pages, is designed to be modular so that Whitaker and Brancato can reconfigure the space into a showroom for meetings with clients for the skate companies they still represent full-time. At night, there’s a fold-out full-size ping-pong table to entertain friends and neighbors. And like many Jersey City establishments, the storefront will also house revolving monthly art exhibits. The first installment, which opened in May, was a collection of found artwork by Justin White dubbed Hardly Art Hardly Garbage.

Bonus: The store is a stones-throw from the community roller hockey rink frequented by members of Jersey City’s skate community.

“Every other major city in North Jersey has a skate park that’s city-maintained and produced,” Whitaker says. “While that’s something we’re pushing for, just to have the rink for now is better than nothing.”

Along with other area skate shops, like 9 Lives on Newark Avenue and Classic in Bayonne, Holmes and Company has contributed to providing and maintaining the the park’s wooden skate obstacles. “Everyone in the Jersey City skateboarding community pitches in to maintain it,” Whitaker says. Including the teenaged skaters that can often be found milling about the store. (Indeed, there were a few pitching in to straighten up the store’s deck display when JCI paid it a visit.)

While kids are welcome to shop and hang out, Whitaker says he thinks of Holmes as something of a refuge for the elder generation of downtown Jersey City skaters.

“This way the older skate demographic has a space to hang out and drink beer and play ping-pong,” he says. “And hopefully they’ll buy some stuff.”

More photos:

Holmes & Co. Outfitters | 203 Brunswick St. | 201-332-3322 | shopatholmes.com