As you may have heard, Hillcrest Junk, a fixture in the Hillcrest neighborhood of Little Rock for 26 years, is shutting its doors.
Jeff Johnson, and his wife, Janet, own the vintage goods store at 623 Beechwood St. and are now going through inventory, preparing for their closing sale, which begins May 12. “It will continue on through the month of May,” Jeff Johnson said. “Depending on how well it goes, we may extend it, but we’re not planning to do that for very long.”
Johnson said the couple were closing the popular store because “it’s just time to retire,” adding, “We needed some time to spend for ourselves.”
The Johnsons own the two-unit building, which also houses Izard Chocolate, and will be looking to lease their space.
The store was open only three days a week, Sunday through Tuesday, and a line often formed before 10 a.m. Sunday with shoppers waiting to check out that week’s new (old, mostly) items. Others made it part of their after-church or after-Sunday brunch ritual. The Johnsons scoured estate sales, yard sales and auctions for items to sell in their store. People also came to them with estates to sell.
Johnson said they’ve amassed quite a bit of inventory that they’re pulling from storage to place in the going-out-of-business sale. “We’ll be marking everything down.”
The item with one of the most interesting back stories, Johnson said, was a 19th century vase that someone was planning to use as a funeral urn/lamp to bequeath to family members for perpetual remembrance. But most of their goods — usually under $100 — were more “everyday items.”
“We enjoyed meeting all the people and got to know a lot of people very well,” he said. “We’re going to miss it. It was a big part of our life, but we’ll be looking forward to some down time.”
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