What began as a passion for design and antiques between friends Simon Carson, Lorri Boffo and Timothy Reynolds has evolved into a business that doubles as a gathering place for Tucson’s vintage community. Gather a Vintage Market operates out of an unassuming brick building in the Lost Barrio, and for four days each month the team turns the address at 300 S. Park Ave. into a curated environment where shoppers can move through fully staged rooms and hunt for pieces that carry a history of their own. The shop functions as part antique store and part interior design showroom, and its monthly openings draw a steady stream of customers who expect to be surprised.
The story of the market is a collaborative one. The three co-owners purchased the business from a personal friend six years ago, bringing together different professional and creative backgrounds. "I do the creative side of it, in charge of that. Lorri does a lot of the back house, staff and all of the bills paying, and everything else that runs the everyday business," Carson said, laying out how their roles divide the daily demands of a business that is open to the public only a few days a month. Timothy Reynolds manages checkout and front-facing sales tasks. Carson traces his own path back to fashion: "I was in the fashion world for years, and traveled around the world buying fashion pieces and designing for brands, and then I would pick up home decor." For Lorri, antiquing was a longtime pastime: "Lorri was always buying, and we would go antiquing and vintaging as our hobby."
Carson returns repeatedly to the idea that every object on the floor has a biography. "What excites me is that there is a story behind every single piece of furniture here. It's lived somewhere, it's been imported from somewhere," he said. That narrative quality is part of what makes the market feel like a treasure hunt: customers come not only for a functional purchase but for an object with provenance and personality. Though Gather doors open only a handful of times each month, preparing the space is a full-time labor. The owners and their team clear, reconfigure and restage the showroom so that each market feels like a new event; regular visitors come expecting to be impressed. "People expect it to be an event. They want to be wowed; they want it over the top; they want to treasure hunt," Carson said.
Visitors chat and inspect faux poppy arrangements while hunting for treasures inside Gather, the downtown vintage market.
The team treats each market as a narrative exercise in interior design. Each month they collaborate to create an entirely new show, arranging antiques and vintage pieces into vignettes intended to feel like lived-in rooms: dining rooms, libraries, living spaces that could belong to different eras and cultures. Walking through the showroom is meant to be a passage through those different settings; one display might evoke a lively Mexican dining room, with bright tableware and Equipal lounge chairs, while another leans into an English countryside aesthetic, with soft floral seating, stacks of books and assorted vases. Carson described the physical work involved: "This space gets cleared out, the whole thing gets cleared off the floor, apart from the big, big pieces of furniture, and then it gets all reset." The result is that even repeat visitors often encounter a radically different environment from one month to the next.
Shoppers browse a fully set table of vintage dishware and decorative pieces at Gather, Tucson’s monthly vintage market.
Behind that reset is a broader sourcing and design operation. To assemble fresh, on-trend vintage assortments for the hundreds of clients who visit each market, Gather relies on a network of 16 pickers, each with a particular area of interest or aesthetic specialty. "Andrew loves building things, and builds these beautiful chandeliers," Carson said, pointing to the way the group’s varied skills feed into the monthly presentation. Those pickers, the owners and the in-house team work weeks in advance to find, repair, stage and price items so the floor is ready on opening day.
The merchandise itself spans a wide range of categories — furniture, home decor and smaller antique curios — and the presentation is central to the shop’s draw. Carson emphasized that many customers value the convenience and curation: rather than head out to multiple antique stores or hunt piece by piece, shoppers can find a variety of unique items all in one place. "They want to find things that they don't have. They don't have to go and pick for themselves or go looking for vintage in other places. It's all in one place," he said. That philosophy shapes both the inventory and the way items are grouped into coherent scenes that suggest how they might function together in a real home.
What began as a shared hobby among friends has taken on the shape of a business that blends retail, design and community. The market’s intermittent schedule — open intensively for a few days each month — has become part of its identity, framing each opening as an occasion for discovery. For the owners, the work is both creative and logistical: they marry Carson’s design instincts and global buying background with Boffo’s operational oversight and Reynolds’ customer-facing role to keep the monthly enterprise running. For visitors, the result is a rotating marketplace where every visit can feel like the start of a new treasure hunt.
In July 2026, Gather hosted its monthly market July 9-12 (Thurs-Sat 10-5, Sun 10-3) at 300 S. Park Ave., recently restocking ahead of the weekend and drawing visitors despite Tucson's triple-digit heat. The business's Facebook page highlighted strong community support for the local vintage destination.
The market was launched by Simone and Tray Gers and held its first four-day event in January 2013.
The Gather space occupies a former lumberyard the owners describe as the Old Arizona Sash and Door Warehouse, noted on the business’s site for its galvanized tin walls, exposed rafters and wooden floors.
Gather’s official website lists 16 vendors and says those vendors source inventory from across the United States and in Europe to supply each month’s themed market.