Standing just off the curb on a street downtown, Gordon MacKay leans into the rear passenger door of his car. He holds up a shockingly yellow T-shirt. An affable blue alien named Irbir holds up a four-fingered hand in greeting. He looks like a cross between E.T. and something Luke Skywalker would nod to inside the cantina on planet Tatooine. Bold black letters next to him read, “I’d rather be in Rochester,” above the smaller tagline, “It’s got it!” — a defunct marketing slogan and mascot for the city that only lasted a couple of years.
The shirt, copyright 1982, is one of 100-plus vintage Rochester fashion items in MacKay’s collection. He peeled off shirts one by one from a crisp stack lying on his back seat. There was a shirt celebrating the opening of a new Wegmans store in 1994; one marketing the Red Wings Ticket Club with a dopey-looking cartoon guy holding a frothy Genesee Beer glass in 1981; and a gray shirt from 1987 covered in white earthworms, laid out in the form of the city’s infamous Can of Worms junction of Interstates 490 and 590 and Route 96.
MacKay’s collection has grown over the last two-and-a-half years as he’s rummaged through thrift stores and fleas, scoured online marketplaces and even asked to buy clothes off peoples’ backs. Arranged for a later date, of course.
“I’ve been able to do a couple different buyouts from people who owned the pieces originally, and they come with stories,” he said. “They represent different things that cohesively build into the really dynamic identity of Rochester, which I really love. I love Rochester.”
A Williamson native who just graduated from SUNY Geneseo and was accepted into Nazareth University’s psychology masters program, MacKay is an all-vintage guy. When we met, he listed off his wardrobe’s decades-of-origin. A faded blue, logoless cap from the ‘90s. Jeans, also from the ‘90s. A long-sleeved, white-collared rugby shirt with thick green and blue stripes from the ‘50s.
Now living in the city of Rochester, his penchant for collecting old Rochester gear offers him a glimpse into local history. One muted yellow shirt he holds up from his car is from the Seneca Park Zoo in the ‘70s. A portrait of the chimpanzee Jimmy is featured in the top middle, a great ape who lived at the zoo to a record-setting 55 years old.
Look around anywhere and you’ll see someone wearing some 20-to-60-year-old, one-off, freebie T-shirt advertising an old business or product or destination. It can be both a fashion statement and a conversation starter.
Sarah Pavia, owner of the curated Second Look Boutique in the South Wedge, has seen the rise in popularity of vintage clothes across all ages.
“Nineties- and Y2K-era clothing has been especially hot lately and doesn’t stay on our shelves for long,” she said, adding that Rochester pieces, especially, fly out the door. “The area loves embracing their love of Roc.”
MacKay makes money both working for The Lucky Flea and selling vintage clothes online. He has hundreds, maybe a thousand-or-so items that he’s procured for resale in his apartment. But the Rochester stuff he keeps for his personal collection.
Aside from some of the older and more fragile pieces in his collection, MacKay wears his vintage finds out and about “all the time,” part of his mind for sustainability in fashion.
“I like the idea of not buying new clothes,” he said. “There’s more than enough that’s already out there.”
At this year’s Lilac Festival, he and his girlfriend, Evelyn Hochreiter, were rocking vintage fest merch and they were stopped multiple times by people who wanted to talk about the old clothes. It’s a semi-regular occurrence for MacKay, and goes both ways. One day he ran into someone wearing a 96.5 WCMF shirt from the ‘80s. His name was Zack, and it turned out his dad was a local radio legend – Dave Kane.
“I didn’t know he was his son,” MacKay said. “I wanted to know if I could buy (the shirt) right off his back. He said, ‘No, I have personal connections to this one. But my dad might have some old ones.’”
That’s how MacKay wound up making acquaintance with Kane-O, who hosted popular radio blocks Breakfast with the Beatles and Workforce on WCMF from the 1980s up into the 2020s. Now MacKay owns a handful of ‘80s and ‘90s shirts from the station, plus a pair of Kane’s personally embroidered and flashy WCMF jackets.
A bookcase in MacKay’s Rochester apartment has been repurposed to display stacks and stacks of these venerated historical artifacts. To keep everything neat and uniform, he bought a shirt folding board, the kind they use in retail stores. He’s always on the lookout to add to his collection. instagram.com/lilaclaundry
Kellen Beck is a Rochester-based writer whose most-prized piece of fashion is a Sterling Marlin Kodak Film Racing NASCAR hat from the mid ‘90s. You can email him at kellentbeck@gmail.com.
