Kyleen Wade still selling style at Finders Keepers

Strainer gets most votes in Queensbury supervisor race

By Ken Tingley

It was a hot summer morning and I had walked into Kyleen Wade’s shop on Ridge Street unannounced. Within minutes, Kyleen was parading me through this little Mecca for fashionistas, finally stopping at the bras. She assured me they had their original tags on them and had never been worn. She also assured me they were “wicked cheap.” Why she was telling me this was unclear.

For months while sitting at the red light at Ridge and Sanford, I had wondered about the little dress shop and the woman with the flowing blonde hair dressing the mannequins out front.

I finally stopped.

That’s how life is sometimes. Crossroads can be literal.

While learning about the bras, I found a backstory about a young woman from Vermont who wanted to go to law school and help abused children. She had worked with a group called “Have Justice Will Travel” dedicated to ending the generational cycles of abuse in rural areas. It gave her the chance to see the legal system up close and how the lawyers often became detached.

Detached is not in Kyleen’s DNA.

She was 32 and chose another path.

“Maybe instead of changing the world, she just wanted to invent a new one,” I wrote in 2008.

This past week I showed up unannounced again. I was looking for the rest of the story.

It was 15 years ago that I found Kyleen Wade literally at a crossroads with her Finders Keepers store.

“When I started,  it was about recycling, making the clothes new again,” Kyleen said. “When I think about the quality (of clothes) at the mall, well, what you get here is different. We are particular. We’re inspecting the clothes, evaluating. We’re not judging, but we are meticulous.”

Finders Keepers is Kyleen’s consignment shop, but it is so much more than a second-hand clothes story. That’s where you find the heart and soul. She rescues clothes, reinvents them, creates style and opportunity for young and old alike.

There is a light in her eyes when she talks about it.

It is her Finders Keepers’ self.

She says it is here at her store when she is doing the basic work, the tagging, the matching, the basic day to day work that keeps her grounded. She says it “centers” her.

“It started as recycling,” Kyleen begins. “It was a way to keep things that people didn’t want. My mother used to take us to the thrift store in Bennington Vt. It’s remains there to this day. Now I know this is the place people can go to be fashionably conscious.”

Finders Keepers is at 206 Glen Sreet in downtown Glens Falls.

At an affordable price.

Over the years, a parade of women have put their themselves in Kyleen’s hands and that is part of the service as well.

Kyleen sees the possibilities.

She sees something in the clothing of a bygone era that others have missed.

She resurrects, not only a piece of clothing, but sometimes the visitors to her world, giving them a sense of themselves, an identity, a style, a pride that raises them up and makes them not only happier, but able to hold their head a little higher.

Those are my words, not Kyleen’s, because here’s the thing, she obviously cares.

For her customers.,

For her girls who work for her - she would never call them employees - young women she hopes to teach about the world and their place in it. “I know this is not going to be their last stop,” she says knowingly.

And maybe she is still searching for her own place in the world and how she can make the community around her better.

There’s magic flowing in those clothes racks.

And when her customers cannot afford to be stylish, Kyleen makes that happen, too.

Sure, she is a businesswoman, but it is more than that.

Kyleen Wade opened a new consignment furniture outlet in downtown Glens Falls last mouth.

As you tour her two different stories - one for clothes, and the new one for furniture - it is clear she is constantly evaluating, creating, envisioning what could make it better, how it could be more successful and how she can connect with the people that walk in the door looking for, well, something they can’t even define.

And when you stop and ask her a question, there is a pause.

Often a very long pause. She is unafraid to let the silence fill the air as she contemplates  how she really feels, choosing her words carefully, meticulously.

She is considering the dilemma around her in the new furniture store.

The business is just a month old, but the merchandise isn’t moving.

The furniture is nice. Big family dining room tables, china cabinets, quality tables and lamps that were expensive decades ago. It isn’t an antique store, but it isn’t second-hand furniture either. None of it seems to be what people want right now. She is trying to figure out the niche. How to advertise it? How to make it profitable.

She has changed, too.

She talks about being “betrayed” by a former employee. The pain is obvious.

But so is the passion for the work.

Brides-to-be felt uncomfortable changing in the big private room, so Kyleen built them a changing room.

She shows me a room awash in wedding gowns.

She laments that customers have felt uncomfortable changing in the big private room so she is building a changing room to give them more privacy.

Earlier this year, on another hot summer day, we reconnected after 15 years.

My sister-in-law had died. She had impeccable style and taste in clothes in a walk-in closet that overflowed.

We asked Kyleen for help?

It was another part of the service. The sad part. Husbands and daughters asking for help with the clothes of their departed wives and mothers.

Kyleen always says the right thing.

She absorbs the sadness as if it is her own.

Standing in the driveway afterward, I reminded Kyleen of the column I wrote about her 15 years earlier and she immediately talked about showing me the bras.

“I don’t know why I did that,” she asks out loud.

She remembered.

The bra story made me laugh for the first time in a week.

Local elections

It was nice to see Queensbury voters give David Strainer the most votes in the supervisor at large race.

Strainer had previously served three times on the county Board of Supervisors after losing six times. I can’t ever remember a Democrat received the most votes in the supervisor at large race.

Retiring Warren County clerk Pam Vogel’s endorsement must have carried some weight in the county clerk’s race as Carrie Black won with a 7,616-6,836 margin of victory. Black was running as a Democrat.

There were more than 14,000 voters cast in the clerk’s race and with 42,000 or so registered voters in the county that is about a 30 percent turnout for the local election. Many will say that is a pretty good turnout with only one county-wide race. I still think it is kind of sad more people don’t vote.

Former Post-Star reporter Maury Thompson has his own chair at the Folklife Center at Crandall Library.

Folklife Center

I made a visit to the Folklife Center at Crandall Library this week. I’m embarrassed to say, but it was the first time I have visited this amazing resource. From city directories to century-old maps, the Folklife Center is an incredible resource for Glens Falls and Warren County history.

Former Post-Star reporter Maury Thompson was always talking about the information he found while doing research at the Folklife Center.

As I was leaving, Maury’s name came up and I was informed that the Folklife Center had dedicated a special chair with his name on it after he retired from The Post-Star.

Author to speak

The Chapman Museum’s current exhibit on photographer Seneca Ray Stoddard is something every local resident should see. I’ve been reading Dr. Daniel Way’s book Seneca Ray Stoddard: An Intimate Look at an Adirondack Legend since seeing the exhibit.

I had no idea that Stoddard was such a big deal - not just in Glens Falls - but nationally.

Way will be speaking Wednesday, Nov. 15 at the Queensbury Masonic Historical Society at 15 Burke Dr. In Queensbury. The lecture is co-sponsored by the Warren County Historical Society.

The talk would be a perfect intro into seeing the exhibit at the Chapman Museum.

New book

Reminder, that if you would like to order any of my three books online - hey, Christmas is coming - I have created a new web page for the books.

The link is below.

The books are also being sold at Ace Hardware, Warren County Historical Society (Queensbury); Chapman Museum (Glens Falls); Battenkill Books (Cambridge); and McKernon Gallery (Hudson Falls).