Maureen Wallenfang
Appleton Post-Crescent
Published 12:30 PM EDT Sep 26, 2019
If you’ve been around long enough, you remember Hardly Ever, a shop that started in 1977 on Appleton Street, across from Milhaupt’s Bicycles, before moving to the basement of Beggar’s Tune.
It changed its name along the way to Vagabond Imports and landed at 113 E. College Ave. in downtown Appleton.
This week it started its closing sale, wrapping up 42 years for both the shop and retiring owner Peter Isakson.
Isakson, now 74, started buying and selling imported trinkets and clothing after he got back from Vietnam and while teaching at the University of Maryland. He got the buying bug on a road trip through India.
“I’d pick things up and sell them at the university. Jewelry and stuff. That’s what started it,” he said.
The Menasha native moved back home and start a store here. At one point, he had five stores, including Appleton, Stevens Point, Fish Creek, Oshkosh and Green Bay.
He was a hippie, and the shop still has incense and a mellow tie dye-vibe, but these days he’s more Jimmy Buffett-like in a tropical shirt and baseball cap.
The shop is known for women’s and girls’ clothing, like summer tanks and sarongs. It has carved wooden boxes, leather coin purses, tapestries and bedspreads from Thailand, China and Bali. Prayer flags from Nepal are strung from the ceiling. Wall hangings quote the Dalai Lama and Jimi Hendrix.
“To shop here, you don’t have to be a hippie. You don’t have to have purple hair,” he said. “There are still people who appreciate handmade and natural fabric items.”
“We were shocked to see you’re retiring, but good for you,” said Lisa Perkofski of Little Chute, a customer for the past decade who stopped in Wednesday. She brought her 8-year-old daughter who picked out a wooden percussion instrument in the shape of a frog. “My kids ask to come here because they love the little trinkets and incense,” she said.
Isakson said he’ll close when his inventory is sold off, “probably around the end of October.” He’ll rent out the shop space and hit the road once again. “I have a friend in Ecuador and it sounds pretty interesting. I have a friend in Spain that I want to visit.”
Does he consider the shop’s closure the end of a longtime downtown institution?
He shrugs.
“They’ll get over it,” he said.
Contact Maureen Wallenfang at 920-993-7116 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @wallenfang.
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