The neighborhood surrounding Rialto Extra has the ability to make one much more precautious than usual; when I park along the street a few blocks away, I double check that my car is locked. Skinny, grey-green weeds challenge the height and prominence of violated parking meters. Used Clue cards lay spilled across the cracked pavement, providing no help in settling one’s nerves.

But the walk into Rialto is essential. Maybe not if you’re just visiting to score a rockin’ party costume; in that case, receiving accusing stares from the homeless may be detrimental to your overall goal. But when going to observe, admire, and reflect, noticing these surroundings is just as important to the experience as entering the boutique itself.

Opening the heavy, paint-chipped door and stepping from hot cement to slick, mahogany floors is a relief. “It’s like walking into your grandma’s closet” says Ana, the salesperson on duty for the day. She thinks I’m a first timer. I’m not. By now I’m familiar with the musty smell, the beautiful molding on the ceiling, and the wide variety of furs that Rialto displays.

My mom was actually the first person to tell me about the store. How she found out about it I have no idea, but about two years ago me and my foreign-exchange-student friend Maja somehow ended up in that store with her at an open house celebration. When Ana invites me to sit down, take my time, and write, I glance around the room, picturing the way we were back then, wondering how small, how awkward I must have looked, thinking about how beautiful my mother must have been.

Rialto is full of stories, full of ghosts, inside and out. There are women bundled up in ninety-degree weather, staring off into space; men in stocking caps projecting cat calls; kids with Nike tennis shoes and no shirts. There are glamorous young women with dark curls and garnet-stained lips wearing sequined shifts and doing the Charleston; little blue-hairs bundled up in structured coats, prepared to fight the September chill as they take an afternoon stroll; girls with high-tops and 80s-hair leaning against the wall, smoking cigs; and weaving through it all, a dumpy, short, red-head, about age 46.

Vintage is an art, a way of life that extends so much further than the clothes we put on our backs or the hipster-esque label we may apply to ourselves. It’s about memories, about the people that came before us, and about the beauty that came from their lives.