Garageland goodness: vinyl vintage and food in downtown Spokane
There’s a lot going on in Garageland, the new record store in downtown Spokane where you can buy an album – on vinyl – while drinking a beer.
Half of the restaurant and record shop holds an antique mall, so you can also browse rows of vintage ware before or after eating lunch or dinner. There’s happy hour here, too.
“You can shop with your drink,” said JJ Wandler, one of the owners of the new restaurant, bar and vinyl-and-vintage shop on West Riverside Avenue.
Beer in hand, you might be more likely to buy a record or some other cool old stuff. But there’s no pressure at this relaxed, four-in-one stop, named for the 1977 song by The Clash. “Garageland,” the final track of the band’s self-titled debut album, acknowledges the band’s working-class roots and fits the eclectic, theme of the venue.
“It’s a playland,” said Wandler, who scours garage and estate sales to find things to use to decorate the restaurant or to sell in the vintage shop.
The dug-out canoe that hangs above the bar came from a South Hill couple’s garage. The three vintage refrigerators that hold bottles and cans behind the bar were “people’s beer fridges out in their garages.” A couple thousand vinyl records from Wandler’s personal collection are for sale in the shop, which he owns with local musician Shawn Cox.
They got the keys to the place June 1, about two months after Wandler moved back to Spokane after 17 years in Sequim and Seattle, where he owns a French-themed eatery and lounge. Gainsbourg , in the Greenwood neighborhood, is named for the late French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. Wandler’s never been to France, but he has a tattoo of the Eiffel Tower on his right forearm and he’s “a big fan” of Gainsbourg. Expect to hear his music – along with The Clash and other garage rock bands from the 1960s and ’70s – at Garageland.
The record store opened at the end of August with about 3,000 records – mostly punk, alternative rock and rock.
“We have a really nice jazz and blues section, too,” Wandler said.
Records run from $3 or $4 to $200, even $450 for a rarer find.
But don’t look for classical or country music records here, unless you want to find Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Wanda Jackson, Johnny Cash, or as Wandler put is, “the stuff that transcends the genre. You’re not going to find Toby Keith records here.”
The bar and restaurant were up and running mid-October. The vintage shop opened at the end of November.
Opening the business was a circle-back of sorts for Wandler, who used to manage the venue when it was Mother’s Pub in the late 1990s. Before that, it was Henry’s, where, Wandler said, “I had my first non-legal drink in 1990. I came in with a fake ID. I was 19.”
After that, the space has housed numerous night clubs and bars: The B-Side, The Seaside, The Zombie Room, The Blvd.
“This list is long,” said Wandler, who waited tables and tended bar throughout Spokane while he was in college – at spots such as the Big Dipper, Rocky Rococo, Sea Galley, China Best.
“The last place I worked was this exact location,” he said.
Reverend Horton Heat played here. Legend has it so did Willie Nelson – in a free, impromptu show.
“They say he wandered in – this would be in the ’70s – and he had an acoustic guitar with him and played a show for the people that were here. He said, ‘Well, I oughta buy this place; it’s already named after me,’ ” said Wandler, noting the spot was Washboard Willie’s back then.
“This is a much storied venue in Spokane,” he said. But the place had been empty since 2009 save for a few Halloween parties.
By then, Wandler was 11 years gone from Spokane. Born here and raised in Wenatchee, he returned to the area to attend Eastern Washington University. After graduating with a degree in English, he moved to the West Side.
“When I left in 1998, I felt Spokane was lacking in a lot of arenas,” Wandler said, singling out the music scene, restaurants and bars, and arts and cultural events.
Now, he sees Spokane as being in the beginning of a renaissance. Still, he didn’t plan on opening a business in Spokane.
“This whole place was based on a misunderstanding,” said Wandler, who had received a Facebook message from Cox, an acquaintance who had heard through the grapevine that Wandler had planned to open a record store.
“I had mentioned I was going to consign some records,” said Wandler, who has some 7,000 albums. “The game of telephone somehow turned into I’m opening a record store. I wasn’t. But it planted the seed in my mind.”
Cox has wanted to open a record store “for at least 20 years.” He was, he said, the first customer at 4000 Holes when the Spokane record store opened in the summer of 1989. Twenty-six years later, his oldest daughter, 20, works in the kitchen at Garageland.
Cox was born and raised in Spokane, graduated from college in Bellingham, lived in Los Angeles and worked in Everett before moving back to Spokane in 2004.
“I just missed it. I love Spokane,” said Cox, the drummer of the local band Whiskey Dick Mountain. In his early days, he played in a band called Huck that performed at Garageland when it was Mother’s in the late 1990s and the early aughts after it was the B-Side.
At that time, Wandler was working in eateries in Seattle’s Ballard and Fremont neighborhoods. He opened his own in 2008. The menu at Gainsbourg is “French comfort food.” There’s steak frites, duck confit, a soup du jour, chocolate mousse.
Some similar items will appear at Garageland, which seats 68 and features what Wandler calls “Inland Northwest comfort food.” He hopes to offer locally sourced, organic ingredients eventually. “But right now we’re just going for delicious.”
Starters run from $5 to $8 and feature truffle oil frites, fried goat cheese with crostini and caramelized onion, Brussels sprouts with bacon, venison chili and beet salad with arugula and pecans.
Mains cost $10 to $17 and feature truffle mac-and-cheese, steak frites, chicken and waffles, and the Garageland burger with garlic aioli, arugula, truffled mushrooms and Delice de Bourogne, a buttery, triple-cream, French, cow’s milk cheese.
Desserts are $7 and include huckleberry cheesecake and raisin bread pudding with caramel sauce. Draft beer – there are three rotating taps – is $6 per pint. Brunch is served Saturdays and Sundays.
Craft cocktails cost $8 to $12. Lust for Life, Garageland’s version of the Hemingway daiquiri – with rum, maraschino, lime and grapefruit – is $8. Cinnamon Girl – a house-created beverage with absinthe, antica, mesquite-sage simple syrup, orange bitters and soda – is $12.
Absinthe is $9 to $18 per glass.
The plan, Wandler said, is to be “innovative and affordable,” which is how he finds Spokane these days.
After 15 years in Seattle, he had rented a house at Nash’s Organic Farm on the Olympic Peninsula.
“It was a quality of life issue,” he said. “We didn’t want to deal with the rat race.”
But, as father of two young daughters, ages 5 months and 3 years old, he wanted to be closer to family and conveniences of a larger metropolitan area – without being in the Interstate 5 corridor.
Spokane offers both – as well as a chance to return to his roots and the space he used to run.
“The idea is for a comfortable feel. We want it to feel like a place that’s been here for a long time,” Wandler said.
“And,” Cox said, “it has.”