Inside a century-old soda bottling plant in historic Riverside, Cool Stuff Vintage has become a sanctuary for a generation raised on smartphones but increasingly hungry for physical connection.
For six years, owners Christina and Eric Ogle have filled the space with walls of vinyl records, vintage cameras, and hundreds of novels, offering customers a chance to unplug.
After decades of decline, U.S. vinyl, CD, and secondhand clothing sales are all climbing again, with vinyl record sales surpassing $1 billion in 2025, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
Finding the treasures
Vinyl records cascade down the walls of the warehouse, with countless pieces of bygone brands and memorabilia cluttering the shelves.
The shop has built a following well beyond Riverside, voted Best Antique/Vintage Shop in Jacksonville by Folio Weekly readers three years running, with vinyl, vintage clothing, film cameras and, lately, sewing machines and vintage fabric among its most requested items.
Maui Fili
Cool Stuff Vintage is well known in the Jacksonville area for its vintage apparel and collection of analog entertainment, like its vintage cameras, vinyl records, VHS tapes, and CDs, according to Eric Ogle.
New inventory consistently circulates through the store’s warped wooden shelves, with the Ogles sourcing items by attending auctions, rummaging through yard sales and antique stores, or via donation.
“People bring items to us via phone, email, and Instagram,” Eric Ogle said.
“If we’re not here, we’re sourcing. We’re working all day, every day,” said Christina Ogle.
From there, the Ogles will schedule a visit, sometimes to a house, sometimes to a storage unit, sometimes to an entire estate that needs to be cleared out.
One of Eric Ogle’s memorable finds came from a building clear-out near the shop. He struck a deal to help empty the place before renovation in exchange for keeping whatever he wanted inside.
“They said the dumpsters show up tomorrow, and we’re just going to start chucking,” he said. “So if you want to come, then talk to the boss.”
The building was the site of an old Jacksonville signage company, and Ogle came across multiple discarded signs.
“All of it was going to go in the dumpster otherwise,” Eric Ogle said. “Some hand paintings, a lot of neon, a lot of channel letters, block letters.”
“You have to drag me away from here”
Maui Fili
Cool Stuff Vintage first opened its doors in August of 2020.
Christina Ogle has an undergraduate degree in history and a master’s in intellectual history, credentials she joked prepared her “to do nothing.” She worked at State Farm Insurance during the week and, on weekends, participated in vendors at local antique stores.
Her business partner and husband, Eric Ogle, worked for 30 years as a chef in northern Italian and authentic Mexican kitchens across several hotels. According to Ogle, the couple would talk about having their own vintage store.
“Cool Stuff Vintage is something Christina and I talked about for a long time,” Eric Ogle said. “As I got older and got tired of working late hours and every holiday, we said, all right, we’re done, we’re going to start this.”
Cool Stuff Vintage first opened its doors in August 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, with masks required to pass through the lacquered French doors. The store only featured one sale a month.
At the start, Eric managed the store during the day, while Christina continued working at State Farm, joining Ogle after hours. With the store’s expansive and constantly changing inventory, Christina would leave the insurance job to be at the store full time.
Six years later, Cool Stuff Vintage is open seven days a week.
“This is my passion,” Christina Ogle said. “You have to drag me away from here.”
The Book Lounge
Maui Fili
Christina Ogle said that the shop has dedicated entire sections to books that have faced challenges or bans.
The shop’s book room, known as the Book Lounge, has become a signature space for the store.
The Book Lounge hosts free collage workshops and acts as a favorite hangout for browsers who aren’t necessarily there to buy. Eric Ogle said the credit for it belongs entirely to his wife.
“Any book question, you should ask Christina. She picks every single one of these books; it’s not just a mystery box we buy from somewhere,” said Eric Ogle. “There’s a method to her madness.”
Christina Ogle picks every title that lands in the Book Lounge, including a running collection of banned books she seeks out on purpose.
She said her approach to stocking the shelves is simple: she buys classics, philosophy, religious texts and history, staying away from anything scientifically or factually out of date. When it comes to books that have been pulled from library shelves elsewhere, she takes the opposite approach.
“If there is a banned book, I want it on our shelf,” she said.
Most classics have been banned somewhere at some point, Christina Ogle said, and the shop has, at times, dedicated entire sections to titles that have faced challenges or bans.
“We kind of come and go with that,” she said, “but if it’s banned, we’re going to try to get it.”
She said she’s gotten almost no pushback from customers over what’s on the shelves, and she’s not interested in making exceptions.
“I find that the people who shop here, they want the banned books, they want books,” she said. “I just don’t believe at all in censorship, period. And I want kids, especially, to be able to come in here and find books that are going to feed their souls.”
Altered: Alternative to Fast Fashion
Cool Stuff Vintage also features patterns from past generations of fashionistas. Books, vintage clothing, vinyl records, and film cameras form the core of what the Ogles carry, but customer requests shape the rest of the inventory.
Sewing machines and vintage fabric have been in especially high demand lately, pulled by shoppers who repurpose old material into something new, according to Eric Ogle.
Beyond entertainment, this shift toward intentional consumption extends to fashion, as shoppers increasingly trade disposable fast fashion for the longevity and character of vintage finds.
Maui Fili
A major draw to analog and physical media is that you own it, according to Eric Ogle.
Poppy Aland, a UNF history and American Sign Language interpreting double major, has been thrifting for about seven years, since her mother introduced her to it as a kid.
“It’s kind of my reset time too, because I’m always busy,” Aland said. “When I get the time, I’m like, let’s go shopping, let’s go thrifting, this is calm. It reconnects me with my friends.”
According to Aland, she often will use the time as a break from socials, pocketing her phone as she browses the aisles.
“When I go with my friend, we treat it as an experience; we turn off our phones and just look at all these things,” said Aland.
Aland alters much of what she buys herself, sewing skirts to fit or repurposing scarves and yarn scraps into something new, a habit she picked up from her mother.
“I get that from my mom,” Aland said. “She’s a very big DIY-er.”
Aland said she steers friends toward secondhand shops instead of fast fashion retailers when she can, pointing to quality that outlasts the brand.
“I have this velvet skirt that I love, that is in such great condition. The brand isn’t around anymore, but now I have this awesome piece that doesn’t wear and tear on me; it’s limited edition now,” said Aland.
The trend shows up in the numbers, too. The global secondhand apparel market grew 13 percent in 2025 and is projected to reach $393 billion worldwide by 2030, according to ThredUp’s 2026 Resale Report. In the U.S., 62 percent of Gen Z shoppers bought secondhand clothing in the past year.
___
For more information or news tips, or if you see an error in this story or have any compliments or concerns, contact [email protected].