Sharon and Vince Tristan, center, cut the ribbon on their newly expanded Vintage Me Antiques & Collectibles. Photos by Frank Lopez

Vintage Me Antiques & Collectibles in Fresno’s Tower District celebrated an expansion this week with help from the Fresno Area Hispanic Foundation (FAHF), which organized a Thursday ribbon cutting.

The store at 1040 N. Fulton St. carries antiques and collectibles including vintage games, video game consoles, toys, furniture, kitchenware, comic books and vintage clothing.

Co-owner and founder Sharon Tristan ran a different store with another business partner on Fulton Street last year, and after the partner left to pursue a different career, Tristan took over the business.

The old location is still used for storage and a workshop for items they carry.

 

Tristan moved the location of the antique store in October 2018. In June, Tristan bought the space next door, which used to be a barbershop, and expanded the store from 900 square feet to 6,300 square feet.

The expansion includes a vintage video game and toys area in the back of the store, which was inspired by Sharon and her husband and co-owner Vince Tristan’s home collection, which they called “The Vault.”

“We specialize in ‘80s and early ‘90s toys, games, bikes — you name it,” Vince said. We took something that we both loved and enjoyed doing on the weekends — looking for vintage stuff and hanging out with each other — and said, ‘hey, lets put it in a store and build.”

Sharon’s daughter also works at the store as a manager, also helping with a lot of the business matters.

Vintage Me has products from more than 40 local vendors — from art and furniture to jewelry and much more.

There is also a common space in the back that could be rented out as a venue for meetings and special events as well as and arts and crafts.

Vintage me also does a weekly indoor and outdoor flea market every Saturday in the store and in the premises parking lot called “Vintage District.”

Sharon hopes such events can help bring more traffic to the Tower District in the daytime, so it could be known for something more than its nightlife scene.

“We’ve grown dramatically within eight months,” Sharon said. “Our goal is to promote every vendor here and bring back to the heart of Tower District a vintage mall. We know that Clovis has one, and other cities outside Fresno have one, but now we want to bring it back to the Tower District.”