Christian, Ryan and Keith, along with other family members, run Aggieland Garage Door in College Station, Texas. The job often allows them the good fortune of helping clear out some garages in order to make space for working, installing new overhead tracks and so on. While most would consider clearing out a garage a major, unwanted chore, Christian and his family enjoy looking through the various layers of forgotten and discarded items and discovering treasure after treasure and seeing if the customer might like to trade this for that.
“It’s worked very well, everyone makes out and it’s fair,” said Christian.
Set on reliving their youth from the 1980s and ’90s, the family is enjoys seeking out various items from food and beverage promotionals to gas and oil collectibles, to video games to – basically anything that catches their fancy. In the years of doing business this way, they’ve had the good fortune of amassing a lovely collection of arcade games, promotionals, seating options, signs and much more.
“We bring the pieces here to the warehouse and find a place to put them,” he said. “The collecting brings a little fun to work, lets us have a kind of playroom where we can unwind.”
In order to separate work and play, the family built a mezzanine in their warehouse, creating the upstairs into an arena of amazement, rife with lighted signs and video games, a true cacophony of, “I remember this!” Some items, like a revolving, gold-colored Schlitz beer lantern, are fascinatingly rare – signs from Bridgestone Tires, McDonald’s, Whataburger, and more bounce the eye to and fro, creating a dizzy wonderland of color and light and memories. And then there are the games. Anyone who grew up during the ’80s or ’90s knows them, and probably loves them.
“We have a lot of fun here, we work hard, but we enjoy our downtime too,” said Christian.
If that weren’t enough, Christian’s brother, Keith, has taken the time to collect dozens of action figures and toys and lined the walls of his office with them. Literally, wall space is at a minimum and visitors are often left a little shell-shocked by the visual. Action figures from X-MEN, Robocop, Batman and more from makers like Lego and DC and so on absolutely fill the space. Outside of his office, in the common area, is seating and a break area and some fantastic lighting effects to give one the impression that they are now hurtling through space in a giant garage door flying saucer – it’s super cool. In fact, look above the fridge, and you’ll see a Venator-Class Star Destroyer built by Ryan. Garage people are always looking for space, aren’t they?
