It would be hard to miss Chris Bovey's new retail space in the North Monroe Business District.
It's not just that Bovey's operations now occupy the entire ground floor of the three-story Boulevard Building, a prominent landmark at the busy intersection of Indiana Avenue, Northwest Boulevard and North Monroe Street.
Nor is it that the side of the building now features a boardwalk-style mural with "Vintage" in a bold, red cursive and "Print & Neon" in tinier block lettering below. To its left, Bovey's football-headed mascot Mr. Vintage stands in salute.
Much more eye-catching, especially after dark, are the incandescent bulbs that chase one another along a rooftop arrow that arcs downward over the brick building's cornice. Not to mention the glowing, tubular signs — another "Vintage," an electrifying figure with lightning bolts for limbs, one for Dempsey's Brass Rail — that illuminate the shop's windows and interior.
Then again, eye-catching is precisely the point. Bovey's new location is more than a production house and showcase for his retro prints that pay homage to Spokane past and present. It's also meant to indulge his second love, neon.
"I had this neon sign collection in my yard, and I really wanted to combine Vintage Print with some of my signage and actually start a neon museum," he says.
The neon collection Bovey began at his Medical Lake home — an accumulation he affectionately calls the "Boneyard" — got its start back in 2020 with a sign for Wolffy's Hamburgers that was bound for the junkyard.
In time, he added more pieces from local landmarks: An 8-foot pizza slice from Boston Pizza. The avian logo of the now-defunct Blackbird Tavern. Italian Kitchen's caricature chef, whose iconic flipping pan was static until Bovey restored motion to it.
"I had my eye on that chef for years," he says. "It looked so cool. And I kept bugging the owner over and over again. I was very persistent. But the problem with him was that no sign company could get him functional. When I got it, none of the pans were lit. There was no animation to them."
After hiring a professional to carefully remove the Italian Kitchen sign, he "gutted" the chef and got his pan moving again. Now, when Bovey activates a switch at the back of the store, the chef springs to life, with a pronounced click every time the pan illuminates along its trajectory.
That audibility, he says, is part of neon's charm.
"It harkens back to a simpler time, you know what I'm saying? You can hear the mechanics of it. You hear the buzz. If you look up close you can see the neon dancing on some corners," Bovey says. "It instantly brings this feeling of nostalgia and romance back to whoever's looking at it."
Bovey likens neon's je ne sais quoi to that of vinyl records and 35 mm film.
They all have, in his words, a "tactile" quality that eludes their contemporary counterparts. And perhaps the current renewed appreciation of these media is actually for the strange comfort of their analog imperfections — something that's absent from high-tech LED lighting or the sterile ones and zeroes of digital music and video.
PAST IS PRELUDE
In keeping with Bovey's preservationist bent, the new Vintage Print & Neon has many vestiges of its earlier incarnation.
The flashing rooftop arrow, the wall of rectangular prints, the merch, the central printmaking equipment and even some of the signage have all made their way down from the first location that he opened in the heart of the Garland District in 2022.
That space provided Bovey with an excellent starting point for his brick-and-mortar venture, but barely two years had passed before he found himself faced with rising rent costs and a shortage of available space for his planned inventory. He estimates that the Boulevard Building has a one-third larger footprint than the former Garland store, and the ceilings are high enough to display several rows of signs, both neon and painted, as well as prints.
"The visibility [of the new location] is huge, having parking is huge, but we have also expanded into what we can sell as well," Bovey explains. He points to the front section of a classic truck that he salvaged from his yard and kitted out with working headlights.
"We can actually display our shirt designs, which I've never been able to do before. It's always been just on a rack. So allowing those designs to breathe is huge."
Alongside the T-shirts are mugs, cards, stickers and even old-school novelty items like gag faucets and bug candy that Bovey suspects still hold a mischievous allure for the young at heart. Strategically placed throughout are objects like a Mr. Peanut cutout, a creepy mechanical clown, a kiddie sit-on ride in the shape of Looney Tunes' Sylvester the Cat, the giant scissors from Dan's Barber Shop, a retrofitted jukebox and old-fashioned amusement signs.
They all piqued Bovey's curiosity at some point, and his aim is to evoke the same delight in folks who are drawn inside by the glittering lights and the popularity of his prints.
"My hope is that as soon as you walk through the door, you're just going to be blown away, like, 'Oh my gosh. Look at this, look at that, look at that.'"
Bovey plans to share that sense of nostalgic fun more broadly. He's toying with the idea of renting out the space for after-hours events, and he's working toward making the Spokane Neon Museum a reality. The store already has informational placards for some of the more distinctive neon signs, and Bovey is in talks with the Spokane Preservation Advocates to host the city's first-ever neon festival.
Along similar lines, he — under the Spokane Neon Museum moniker — was recently awarded a grant for a project titled "Let There Be Light: Museum Ignites" through the business district's American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, funding.
And based on the response, the public is eagerly picking up what he's putting down. Mayor Lisa Brown performed the ribbon-cutting at Vintage Print + Neon's grand opening on May 3; the event drew somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 guests over the course of the day.
"It was packed," Bovey says. "We had a line around the door waiting to get in. Everyone seemed to love it. They were taking pictures, and a lot of gratitude was expressed for saving the signs."♦
Vintage Print + Neon • 1905 N. Monroe St. • Open Tue-Sun from 11 am to 5 pm • facebook.com/vintageprint.us • 509-443-5275
