Nostalgia Vintage Cafe brings together a vintage store, coffee shop, and DVD rental service, the eclectic brainchild of Philip Kahan, who in 2022 closed his designer boutique in Portland, Me. to move home to Massachusetts and focus on vintage clothing.
“I could sort of see where the clothing industry was going … [and] that not many people wanted to spend money” on high-end items, said Kahan, who runs the Union Square store with his fiancee, Jenny Reddick, and three employees.
Kahan dreamed of opening a two-floor vintage store where the ground floor was a coffee shop that looked like a Blockbuster and the top floor was the clothing store. In the end, he was only able to find a single-floor space for Nostalgia, but the store is packed with vintage t-shirts mostly priced between $20 to $40, counter seating, and a community area with coloring books, gimp bracelet making supplies, and episodes of “The Simpsons” playing on a fatback Emerson TV.
“I wanted people to feel [nostalgic] when they walked into the store,” Kahan said. Neon signs, lava lamps and graffiti murals decorate the walls. He often hears customers saying the store looks like their childhood, he said.
Kahan hand selects each piece of clothing in the store and all items are also available on the online resale platform Depop. Nostalgia has $5 and $10 clothing bins to make sure they “have something for everyone,” Kahan said.
Coffee, candy and CD players
The store opened in June and so far customers mostly come in for the coffee. Beyond traditional drip coffees, the store offers drinks that highlight aspects of a ‘90s childhood: Fluffernutter and Pop Rocks lattes, Nesquik matcha, and Shirley Temples.
Nostalgia also offers a DVD and VHS rental program for $35 per year and anyone who signs up gets a free bag of candy full of Dunkaroos, Sour Patch Kids and Blow Pops. The program currently has 25 members and will be capped at 50 to ensure there is enough media to go around. DVD players and VCRs are available to rent as well.
Even customers who belong to Generation Z “get excited because they don’t know what it was like back in the ‘90s and they’re all coming in buying Walkmen and CD players,” said Kahan.
Physical media collections are popular amongst members of Generation Z. The consultant Kian Bakhtiari wrote in Forbes that Gen Zers seek autonomy and ownership rather than being subject to what’s available on streaming services. The Los Angeles Times reported that DVD sales declined only 9% in 2025 compared to a dip of more than 20% in both 2023 and 2024.
Alongside physical media, there is also a rise in the vintage market. The U.S. secondhand market, which includes vintage and newer used items, is expected to reach a revenue of $61 billion this year and $74 billion by 2029, according to a report by the online thrift store ThredUp. Overall, secondhand shopping sales are growing three times faster than new clothing sales, according to One Planet Capital.
For vintage items specifically, “there’s something about these products that feels quite special to consumers,” said Maren Hoff, assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Hoff said vintage items are in demand because they are scarce compared to current products, one-of-a-kind, sustainable, and, yes, nostalgia for times when “things were easier or better,” Hoff added.
Although coffee shops and vintage stores are not often found in the same place, vintage stores are an “experience in [themselves]” and Nostalgia’s coffee shop only adds to that experience, she said.
Nostalgia’s opening comes at a time when there are nearly a dozen secondhand stores across Somerville and Cambridge. The consignment store Covet, which has four locations, in Boston is set to open in the former Gnomon Copy space in Harvard Square this winter, just down the street from the secondhand stores 2nd Street and The Attic. Cambridge is also home to Retrospect, Boomerangs, Goodwill, Raspberry Beret, FOUND and The Garment District. Somerville also has a Goodwill as well as Buffalo Exchange and Salvation Army.
A stronger
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