EV’s Vintage sits right across the street from Dallas dance institution It’ll Do Club.
Sean Stroud
There’s nothing worse than stumbling out of the club a bit too drunk to safely drive home. Aside from hailing an Uber and hoping your car is there in the morning with all of its windows intact, the only real option is to find a way to kill time as you sober up. Luckily for anyone coming out of It’ll Do Club after a rowdy Saturday night, there’s a vintage store across the street to explore until it’s safe to hit the road.
EV’s Vintage and Resale (4325 Elm St.), at the corner of Elm and Alcalde Streets, stays open until 2 a.m. on Sundays, specifically serving the smashed and spendy. The shop used to be a couple of blocks down, closer to Interstate 30, and was a hot spot for Dallas thrifters for decades. But at its new location, on the farthest edge of Deep Ellum, co-owner Lisa Morar noticed a particularly large Sunday crowd heading to The Church, the historic Sunday night goth club staged in It’ll Do. Taking advantage of the heavy foot traffic, Morar pushed the closing time on Sunday, and plans to add after midnight hours on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, too.
“Most Sundays we stay open until 3 [a.m.] because I’m not going to kick someone out when they can barely stand up by themselves,” Morar tells us.
She paces around the shop, frequently fixing and reorganizing, but she has a warm and welcoming aura that is an invaluable part of EV’s charm.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Morar says. “I’ve never worked in retail, just medicine and up in the sky on a crane or a forklift.”
She never planned to run a thrift store, but after walking into the old and rundown location in 2023, she couldn’t resist stepping in. Morar shuddered as she described the ceiling-high stacks of unlabeled storage bins filled with random junk lining the walls and cluttering the building. She spoke with the shop’s owner, Ken See, and, realizing he had no idea how to run the place, returned the following week with an offer.
“I told him, ‘I’m gonna triple your money in 30 days, and if I don’t, you pay me nothing,’” she says. “‘But if I do, you’re gonna give me 30% of all your sales, and then we’ll talk about getting you online.’”
If your car gets towed from the club, maybe you can pick up a bike to get you home.
Today, the two are business partners. Morar handles the storefront, while See focuses on a secondary business component: Junk Removal by EV’s.
With a more critical eye, Morar enjoys seeing all the oddities that pass through the shop and determining their worth.
“The things people hold onto are either the most valuable or the most shameful,” said the woman who sorts through people’s discarded belongings for a living.
Among the most outlandish items she has come across are a pair of dog testicles and a human skull named Beatrice, both of which were jarred. After heavy consideration, she ultimately passed on both to avoid any potential meltdowns from closed-minded customers.
“It only takes one,” she says.
Hunting for treasure with a buzz at midnight actually sounds kind of fun.
The shop features several rooms to browse with ever-changing items and layouts. In one room, shoppers can find lined-up washers and dryers, and in another, endless racks filled with various utensils and kitchen supplies. Bikes resting high on a shelf, with common tools scattered beneath, make the shop feel like a garage sale, with prices to match.
Running a thrift shop on a busy Dallas street corner comes with its own special set of problems, Morar says. One night, or rather really early morning, she walked outside to find that her car and five other vehicles had been hit by a drunk driver before one of his wheels popped off, leaving his truck stranded down the road. But overall, she has more run-ins with the homeless loitering during the day than with people staggering in drunk from clubs and bars at night.
“In fact, I really enjoy the It’ll Do crowd because they’re so jovial and always in relatively good spirits,” she says.
Aside from their business, Morar and See recently filed paperwork to establish a nonprofit organization to teach ex-cons and people experiencing homelessness valuable job skills. They also host community events that provide food for the unhoused.
So, the next time you need to escape the It’ll Do dancefloor for some fresh air, hop across the street. Or just throw EVs into your thrift shop rotation — your thrift judgment might be sharper in the daylight, anyway. But whether the sun’s out or not, there’s plenty to look through, and the layout is always changing, so each visit is a new journey.