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Marleen Maltby looks over pieces created by Greg Knoroski with Retired Guy Creations at the artisan fair in front of the old Carnegie Library during Small Business Saturday in downtown Vacaville. (Chris Riley/The Reporter)
The annual Small Business Saturday in downtown Vacaville included not only all the familiar brick-and-mortar stores, from DeBartolo & Co. Fine Jewelers to Ray’s Cycle to Journey Downtown, all on Main Street, but also more than two dozen small businesses hailing customers under pop-up tents outdoors.
Standing in line inside Journey Downtown, Devona White of Vacaville waited on Saturday morning to be called up to the theater’s coffee counter.
By day a retailer in Arden Mall in Sacramento, she was a vendor, selling women’s clothing, at the six-hour event, which attracted hundreds of shoppers — families with young children to seniors with leashed dogs — all enjoying the cool but sunny day along Main and Merchant streets.
“I want the citizens to know that I care about them and want to dress up the city a little bit,” said White, bundled in a jacket and scarf to ward off chilly, late-November breezes.
Just outside the theater, at Journey Downtown @ The Library, the site of the old Carnegie Library at 300 Main, Cleo Gisler of Vacaville, doing business as Cleo’s Creative Stitches, offered what she called “quality embroidery for home and fashion.” They included holiday-themed, quilt-like table runners and kitchen towels with one-of-a-kind embroidery, such as holly leaves, cardinals and humorous messages, including one that read “Your opinion wasn’t in the recipe.”
“A lot of people are coming by and looking,” said Gisler, whose husband, Tom, looked comfortable in a nearby folding chair, and she added, “My main thing is visiting with folks” who attended the vendor fair.
Around the corner on Merchant Street, just opposite Heritage House Cafe, a jolly Santa, white-bearded and red-suited, of course, sat in a chair and beckoned children to sit with him and pose for memento photos.
Meanwhile, at the Three Flags Monument, the United States, California and Vacaville city flags fluttered high up on poles as they hemmed in the 40-foot high Christmas tree that will be a focus of Merriment on Main Tuesday evening.
Just down Main, Ashley DeBartolo an employee of DeBartolo & Co. Fine Jewelers, said Small Business Saturday “is a pretty good day for us. The community does a great job supporting us.”
As her father, Louie DeBartolo, helped a customer at a counter, she said business has increased for wedding engagements, because, she noted, “Christmas is a time a lot of people get engaged.”
Among the popular sellers, Ashley said, were diamond-stud earrings, and business in general continues to be good after the December holidays, through Valentine’s Day and on to Mother’s Day in May, followed by the summertime wedding season.
A jeweler for 46 years, 16 of them at 538 Main St., Louie said he cherished Vacaville and his customers, saying, “If you come through my door, I’m happy to take care of you.”
“Being downtown is as good as it gets,” he added.
At Ray’s Cycle, at 400 Main, store manager Phil Seehausen said sales since Black Friday were “OK — it’s not like it can be.”
It was the COVID-19 pandemic, he noted, that spurred bicycle sales, when many people were working remotely or just staying close to home and wanted a way to get exercise safely.
Yet Seehausen, 66, expected sales to pick up as Christmas Eve and Christmas Day approached in the coming weeks.
Lisa Hilas, president of On Stage Vacaville, said the foot traffic inside the Journey Downtown theater was “steady” at noontime and her hope was to raise $600 through vendors, a raffle and tickets to the play “The Vagina Monologues,” which will open Feb. 9 and continue to Feb. 11 at the 308 Main St. space.
Along Merchant Street, many of the well-known stores, among them Clipper Cargo, Motoxotica, Fleet Feet and Tweed Hut, were open for business along with the vendors lined up on both sides of the street.
Matt Taynton, owner of Tweed Hut, had posted signs in his window, that the musical instrument store was closing.
Interviewed briefly inside the 359 Merchant St. store, he said the plan, after 22 years in business, 17 of them in Vacaville, was to close up shop for good.
“I’m retiring,” said Taynton, 60, who started out in a 10-by-12-foot space in Suisun City. “It’s been a good run.”
As for Saturday sales, he said, “We won’t know until the end of the day.”
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