Meet the Columbus woman selling vintage clothes and handmade items from her school bus
If you’ve walked through downtown Columbus on a Saturday morning during Market Days, there’s a strong chance you’ve seen a small white bus parked along Broadway.
It’s typically located near Chancellor’s on the 1100 block of Broadway, or outside Judy Bug’s Books on the 1000 block. Outside the bus sit some chairs, an umbrella and a few mannequins showcasing vintage clothing — a tease of what visitors will see when they step inside.
Step up into the bus, and you’ll be greeted by Candice Crooke in the driver’s seat. She’s a Columbus native, a vintage clothing extraordinaire and the owner of Fountain City Mystic, the vintage clothing and handmade artisan shop she runs out of her bus.
“I love the bus because it’s very freeing,” Crooke told the Ledger-Enquirer. “When you’re driving it, you feel very free. And I feel like people, with the things that we’ve endured especially in the last year, I feel like people are looking for something different. ... People want to see something unique.”
A ‘mobile boutique’
Mannequins, racks of clothing and displays of handmade items cover the interior of the bus. Crooke said she makes most of the items she sells, which include hand-dyed clothing, jewelry and CBD products.
Her specialty is handmade jewelry out of vinyl records. Her wrist cuffs, for which she had wholesale accounts, “started everything,” she said.
“It’s a mobile boutique,” Crooke said. “Basically, what you would see in a store, you’re gonna walk in and see out of my school bus.”
Crooke came up with the idea while living on Tybee Island. Her goal was to open a boutique, but she found herself on a waiting list for commercial property.
She got tired of waiting, so she set up a camper.
“I still wanted to do something mobile because I lived on an island,” Crooke said. “So, it gave me accessibility to the mainland, and other really cool things that I couldn’t do being stuck in a brick-and-mortar.”
Crooke is on her second bus; the first, a tie-died Chevy Bluebird, was totaled during Hurricane Matthew, which struck Savannah in 2016 and was the first Category 5 Atlantic hurricane since Felix in 2007.
In the aftermath of Matthew, she moved to Atlanta, eventually finding her way back to Columbus.
“I’ve been through a lot with this business,” Crooke said. “I lost it in a hurricane, I moved back to Atlanta and actually created another shop, and it actually burned down in a warehouse fire. So, this is kind of my third comeback.”
Something unique
When customers see the bus, Crooke said they remark, “Oh my gosh, I’ve never thought of that.” Or it sparks a nostalgia wherein visitors try to remember the last time they stepped onto a school bus.
“The normal person wouldn’t think, ‘Oh, let me start a business inside of a school bus,’” Crooke said. “But, for me at the time, that’s what worked, and it’s continued to work, and it’s continued to be cool.”
Crooke said she thinks there are “a lot of people like me” in Columbus — people who have left the city, experienced different places and returned home.
Crooke’s goal, she said, is to share her experiences with the city. Helping elevate the downtown area, the city as a whole and its shopping scene is just a bonus.
Crooke said she hopes that people can enter her bus, be themselves and find something in her shop that sparks joy. “Everybody, just have a good time,” she says.
“I’ve done a lot of things,” she said, “and to be able to come back to Columbus and feel like I can contribute in some way, with all of the things I’ve done in life, and for Columbus to notice it and accept it, it’s really special.”
Fountain City Mystic can be found each Saturday morning during Market Days on Broadway, either in front of Chancellor’s, 1108 Broadway, or Judy Bug’s Books, 1033 Broadway. The shop also has a retail space at Cuckoo’s Nest Stake Shop — Crooke is an avid roller skater — at 1326 10th Ave. The shop can also be found on Facebook.
