Inside the final days of Bay State Vintage Guitars

Nonetheless, it’s no secret that Boston’s real estate market has recently gathered multi-pronged momentum. The average cost of office space rent in 2015 was $32.53 per square foot, according to a Boston Globe story from July 2015 -- a 12-month increase of 7.6 percent, at the time. With such rent prices, A.J. says he is not sure he will be able to find an affordable space in the city. Let alone in the same area.

“Ideally, we wouldn’t like to relocate,” he tells us in the days before the shop closed for good. “Right here is just fine... this is a great spot for music and for musicians and it’s been that way for a really long time.”

Mark White, a guitar professor at Berklee and Bay State customer, said the store’s move will not only physically displace the store and its guitars, but it will also displace Craig and A.J.’s knowledge of vintage instruments.

The original 1960 Fender Telecaster White says he bought in 1986 planted the seed for his relationship with Craig and, ever since, he said he has counted on Craig for a lot of instruments.
“Craig is probably one of the most knowledgeable guys of American guitars left on the planet,” White says. “Craig really knows the details -- the small things that nobody else would know. It is incredible.”

Bay State Vintage Guitars is hardly alone in being booted from the building. Music Espresso, a music sheet store, is moving to a new spot within the area. Violin maker Paul Wiessmeyer is temporarily moving into a friend’s shop in the neighborhood.

Jodi Solomon, president of Jodi Solomon Speakers Bureau, writes to Vanyaland that her speakers store moved into the building in April 1994. After more than two decades there, Solomon is moving to an office space she said says is leasing through a friend.

“That so many small businesses were now without a home is a sad commentary on Boston and the lack of support small businesses receive,” Solomon writes in an e-mail.

In correspondence with Wiessmeyer, the violin maker was blunt: “The situation is analogous to clear cutting a forest with complete disregard for the various forms of life and biodiversity to achieve, what I believe in the bigger picture are, short sighted goals. Trees can always be replanted but the biodiversity can not be regenerated as quickly.”

“It’s the big money running rough shot over the little guy," says A.J. Jones. "The little guy who made a point to become a part of the community."

On top of city-esque rents, competition isn’t light either -- Guitar Center opened its Massachusetts Avenue location, a walking distance away, in 2012. Jonathan Moretz, the owner of a local guitar shop and real estate company, and a friend of one of the business owners in 295 Huntington Ave., says the all-things-music store’s opening killed a number of small music stores, such as the ones that were in the building.

“I think that was much more disruptive,” he adds.

Nonetheless, Moretz said he speculates rent was not too bad at 295 Huntington Ave. and now the shops have to deal with the reality that is modern-day, big-city real estate.

“I’m sure that it going to be a problem depending on whether these people just pack up and retire,” Moretz says.

Since moving out, A.J. and Craig Jones have yet to find new quarters to set up shop. They put their amps, guitars and tools in storage, and as of press time, A.J. says he’s been looking for a place to call home. In the meanwhile, they've been working out of his own house.

A.J. may not remember the first time he walked into the store, but on one of the last days at Bay State Vintage Guitars on Huntington Avenue, he looked at what was left of the shop. A wall not too long ago adorned by Fenders and Gibsons -- older than the shop itself -- only had the hooks hinting at its past life. A basket of amplifier tubes in a corner were once used for resurrecting amps. The table were A.J. learned from his father and repaired a number of instruments was being stripped of its tools.

“It’s the big money running rough shot over the little guy," AJ resigns. "The little guy who made a point to become a part of the community."