The Joint rises from the ashes in downtown Vallejo

VALLEJO – When an arson fire damaged downtown Vallejo stores Anchor Pantry and The Joint in May 2022, Stephanie Brown, The Joint’s owner, thought she would never reopen. Even though the store itself had not burned, the soot and smoke had ruined the merchandise and the furniture. It was a total loss. 

Then she started hearing from customers and friends about how much The Joint meant to them. The small gift store at 619 Marin St. had become a hub where people hung out on Saturdays or came during the week for long conversations. They wanted it back. 

Brown had further proof when a GoFundMe campaign set up by Karen Finlay, owner of nearby Alibi Bookshop, quickly raised enough money to help her bridge the long months without income and fund her reopening.

With Anchor Pantry moving to the other side of the street, Brown asked the landlord if he would take down the wall that had separated both businesses and let her expand. He agreed. Having doubled her square footage, Brown saw a chance to change the nature of her shop. 

“I opened The Joint in 2018 as a little gift store, but I wanted to shift my focus from selling things people want to selling things people actually need,” Brown said. “I came up with the concept of a mercantile, which was the sort of general store where you could buy anything and everything in the Wild West.”

It’s no accident that the Wild West inspired this change of direction. Brown grew up in a military family. Her father, an African American who served in the U.S. Air Force, was stationed in Germany and stayed in the country after marrying a German woman. 

As a child, Brown huddled with her dad in front of a small black and white TV that broadcast the Armed Forces Network. They watched endless American westerns, as well as Bonanza, her favorite show. In those stories, the heroes were always white and Native Americans were always the bad guys who ended up dead.

It wasn’t until a stay in Taos, New Mexico, a few years ago that Brown discovered a very different version of the Wild West. Visiting an exhibit about Black cowboys, she learned that a quarter of all cowboys back then had been Black. This piqued her interest, so she started reading more about that period.

“I realized Black people contributed a lot to building the West,” Brown said, “and so did women. The Chinese built the railroad, the Mexican vaqueros were the first cowboys, and of course the Native Americans were everywhere. I loved this idea of the Wild West as a melting pot, and I wanted to retell the story from that point of view.”

Brown started collecting pictures and artifacts of Black cowboys and cowgirls and decorated the store with them, hoping to expand people’s horizons. She was also mesmerized with the New Mexico desert landscape and infused The Joint with that aesthetic. Even the store’s logo — two crossed handguns — draws from the Old West. Brown acknowledges that not everyone loves the message it projects, but she’s quick to add she doesn’t own a gun.

“It’s just an iconic image of the Wild West, and that’s really what the store is all about,” she explains.

Like a classic mercantile, The Joint offers an eclectic array of items, from bamboo toilet paper to vintage cowboy boots and clothing, as well as cast iron oils to keep pots and pans beautiful, handmade leather goods, jewelry, knives, candles, and many more things in between.

“I have a little bit of a shopping addiction,” confesses Brown. “I love hunting for really cool and beautiful handcrafted objects, but luckily I don’t need to keep them. I can sell them in the store, and many people like them.”

Brown is a weaver, and it was important for her to feature in The Joint the work of other artisans from Vallejo. 

“I’m really interested in old time crafts, like weaving, leather working, spoon carving and broom making. I wanted to have a space where people engaged in those kinds of crafts could show their work,” she said.

Bringing customers to downtown Vallejo, however, can be difficult. According to Brown, people who have lived in Vallejo for a long time tend to think the area is dangerous and they avoid it. 

“Personally, I don’t have any qualms. I’m here at all hours of the day and in the evenings and my 10-year-old walks around downtown Vallejo and I don’t really worry,” she said. “I wish more people would come downtown instead of supporting the big box stores on Plaza Drive.”

Brown has noticed that most of her customers are new arrivals. When they move to Vallejo, they want to explore the city and that’s how they find her store and other interesting businesses downtown.

“People tell me over and over again that when they moved here they didn’t know anybody and they felt out of place,” she said. “And when they walked into The Joint, they thought, ‘Oh, here is a space for me.’ That made me realize I needed to figure out a way to bring them all together.”

To that end, Brown and leather artisan Jennifer Larson started a series of craft workshops and events during evenings and weekends called Creative Interchange. Every first Saturday of the month they hold Girls Night Out from 7-9 p.m., where women make a craft that doesn’t require a lot of instruction, so they can focus on socializing. Other workshops teach weaving, leatherwork, candlemaking, collages, and more. A schedule of upcoming workshops and events can be found on The Joint’s website.

“I didn’t want The Joint to be only a retail store. I wanted a deeper connection to the community,” Brown said. “We’ve had a great response. People are hungry for creativity. It’s an amazing outlet to balance the insane world we live in.”