A Second-Chance Shop : First it was fresh leather. Now it’s Roadkill the Store--for recycled rags.
Most folks might think of “road kill” as creature pizza on hot asphalt, but Robert Rasmussen interprets the phrase as something used, lost or just plain rejected.
Rasmussen dreamed of founding a company named Roadkill that would sell all the baseball caps he spotted on the freeways. It was a venture that got swept away alongside the caps in speeding traffic, but the name of the company was resurrected in 1992 when he started cutting leather into jewelry and selling it to Nordstrom and other stores.
His bracelets, earrings, chokers and hair accessories recall the Brady Bunch years, but Rasmussen insists that they’re every bit modern among his high school and college clientele.
With the wholesale end flourishing, Rasmussen returned to his entrepreneur fantasies of hawking recycled fashions with the Labor Day weekend opening of Roadkill the Store near the Orange Circle.
Scenesters from around the county fill the tiny shop on Sundays looking for disco duds before heading to Club 1970s in Los Angeles. And Rasmussen is always there to dress them head to toe.
“I know them really well,” says the thirtysomething store owner about his “Reality Bites”-style patrons. “I’m one of them.”
Customers find clothes to fit their scenes--from bowling shirts to hippie halter tops--that are inexpensive, secondhand and kinda one-of-a-kind.
Racks are thoughtfully crammed with hideously fabulous men’s polyester shirts, crochet tops, cardigans, girlish blouses and trousers. Used Levis are $6 to $20. Skin jackets run the range from suede ($40) to elk ($100).
Shelves are stacked high with fisherman sweaters (around $15), flannel shirts ($7-$12) and Pendletons ($18). Mexican purses, hippy shoulder bags, scarves and knit hats burst from old travel trunks.
Silver necessities, such as hoops, rings and ID bracelets, as well as beaded necklaces and embroidered patches get tagged on brown paper, in line with that ‘90s back-to-basics image.
