I feel like a grown-up shopping at Pine Grove General Store, in all the good ways. As used clothing stores go, it’s delightfully nontrendy. They don’t play Sirius XM. They don’t employ 19-year-olds who wear belt buckles wider than their collective waistline. And they would never sell some God-awful creation made of pleather and fuzz that you look at in a slimming mirror and think, “You know what, I bet I can actually pull this off.” I couldn’t, and neither could you, and that brings me back to Pine Grove. At Pine Grove, I bought my first pair of nondenim slacks, for my first job as a real reporter. I’d worn jeggings and tunics to the music magazine where I worked before that, along with the kind of cheap, trendy baubles you could find at some place that used “vintage” as a buzzword. I bought my favorite boots there, when I moved back to Sonoma County after my first major adult disappointment—when that magazine failed. The boots have a modestly pointed toe and brass snaps down the side, and I’ve worn them to interviews and first days of new work and the weddings of longtime friends, who are slipping out of their 20s just like me. 149 N. Main St., Sebastopol, 707.829.1138.—Rachel Dovey
The 25 Days Project is an online series through the month of December spotlighting some of our favorite local businesses. Read more about the project here, and about our commitment to shopping locally here.
