Chris Bovey's new shop on Garland Avenue isn't technically open on Tuesday, but it's too enjoyably warm and sunny on a late September afternoon to keep the roll-up door along the sidewalk closed.
Bovey's here to meet with me for this story, but he doesn't turn away the half-dozen or so customers who wander in while we chat. They browse for a bit before purchasing T-shirts, posters and coffee mugs featuring his recognizable artistic odes to the Inland Northwest.
The space as a whole is an eclectic homage to local history, art and design. Among Bovey's own art and art-making tools — he moved his screenprinting studio from his Medical Lake home — are remnants of retro advertising signage, salvaged industrial fixtures and neon-lit signs.
At the back of the store, a magnetic wall displays dozens of Bovey's place-specific designs for his popular 13-by-19-inch poster series, including old, new and perpetually popular tributes. Behind the counter are the Vintage Print archives, containing all that's currently in stock of the more than 500 or so designs he's created.
I first met Bovey when I started at the Inlander over a decade ago. He was the paper's art director, but left in 2014 to focus on his increasingly popular art venture. While designing the Inlander's covers and editorial layout, he'd work on his hand-pulled screen prints of local landmarks as a side hobby. Whenever a new design was ready, he'd hang it up in his cubicle and many Inlander staffers, myself included, would drop off $20 to grab his latest homage to an iconic locale or history: Manito Park, Expo '74, Dick's Hamburgers, The Shack and many more.
"It was sustaining itself when I left there, which I didn't know if it would or not," Bovey recalls.
"It's consumed most of my time" in the years since, he adds.
Still, he was nervous about opening a permanent location, even after having much success selling prints and other merchandise online, at local events, and retail locations like Atticus Coffee & Gifts.
Any latent fears subsided when Bovey connected with Katherine Fritchie, who owns the building Vintage Print now calls home, along with the historic Garland Theater just a couple doors west. Bovey initially contacted Fritchie to inquire whether a space connected to the theater was available. Though she told him it wasn't, she had another spot in mind.
"She said, 'I've got this place two doors down that's been sitting vacant for years, and I've been waiting for the right person to come along,'" Bovey says. "She was amazing because she talked me through it."
Bovey realized the chance to be in the historic Garland District, a place highlighted in many of his designs, was a sign things were meant to be.
Even better, Bovey says, is Garland's connection with his other focus of the space: vintage neon signage. Garland is one of the city's few historic, commercial pockets with a proliferation of original, neon-gas-illuminated signage, such as at The Milk Bottle, Ferguson's Cafe, Brown Derby tavern and the Garland Theater.
"This is the only place in Spokane that has a whole bunch of neon like this concentrated into one area," he says. "It seems like a perfect fit. It's so locked in time, and is such a cool piece of history that's been preserved."
Bovey's dive into the world of neon signage began in 2020, when he suddenly acquired the massive metal sign from an old Wolffy's Hamburgers, saving it from the scrapyard. He wasn't sure what he'd do with it but had the space to store it on his property.
Word soon got around town that Bovey was interested in restoring and saving old neon.
"A sign company reached out to me and said, 'Hey, we've got an old hotel sign, do you want it?' And I put that on my property," Bovey says. Then he bought neon-bending equipment from a shuttered business.
"I'm starting to accumulate a collection," he says. "Maybe it would be helpful to start learning how to bend neon just so I can keep this stuff going."
Since then, Bovey's neon "Boneyard," as he's dubbed it, has grown to include familiar relics of local business history. He's added Italian Kitchen's pan-flipping chef, and marquees from the defunct Geno's Pub, Rocky Rococo, The Blackbird, Luigi's and The White Elephant. National Geographic even came out earlier this year to interview him about it all for a magazine article.
Bovey hopes to eventually open the Boneyard to the public a few times a year, but some of the smaller signs he's saved are displayed at the Garland shop.
Outside, a swooping, yellow arrow of incandescent bulbs on top of the building points down to Vintage Print's entrance, along with a green-and-purple neon "IN" sign with chasing arrows.
"It's a labor of love, bringing them out to my property and investing in the structure and restoring the glass and everything like that," he says. "But they all light up every single night."
Saving these signs quickly became a creative calling for Bovey, who says Spokane's cityscape was once filled with these colorful, retro advertisements and wayfindings.
"There's a lot of focus that goes into preservation of buildings, but there's not much with signs," he says. "Like when you look at old shots of Riverside or something like that, it's all neon and it looks like New York City or Chicago. And you don't see it anymore because it all ended up in a scrap heap somewhere."
While Bovey hopes to someday offer visitors the chance to observe the art of neon sign making at his new shop, the space is currently focused on screen printing, with several hands-on opportunities.
One of those is a monthly Print 'n' Pint Night. For $35, attendees can create a print themselves on a T-shirt, tote or poster paper while enjoying a pint of beer.
Customers can also print their own T-shirt or hoodie with a pre-selected, rotating design any time the shop is open. Bovey hopes to invite schools for field trips to teach kids about printing and design. A partnership with the Garland Theater for its throwback movie night series, Totally Tubular Tuesdays, is also in the works.
"My challenge is to try and constantly think about the customer's experience, and not reinvent the store, but just keep it fresh," he says.
The mid-September grand opening was an early indication that many people support Bovey's landmark-focused art. Art, I tell him, that's on the walls of countless homes and businesses near and far.
"It's weird for me to think that I, or at least my work, has an impact on so many people's lives, you know?" he says. "I try not to think about it too much, but it's just cool, because a lot of people will come in here, like they did last weekend, and say, 'Thank you so much for what you're doing.' I'm just making something that makes me happy." ♦
Vintage Print + Neon • 914 W. Garland Ave. • Open Thu 11 am-6 pm, Fri-Sat 11 am-7 pm, Sun 10 am-6 pm • facebook.com/vintageprint.us • 509-217-8453
CORRECTION: The original version of this story noted that National Geographic is featuring Bovey's neon sign preservation project in a TV series, but the feature is for a magazine article.
