BRVintage brings style to the South Side

On a hot day in August, Brady Robert Vaclavik was driving down Route 378 in Pennsylvania when he spotted a peculiar object on the side of the road.

At first glance, it was simply a discarded shopping cart. But as Vaclavik drove closer, he said he saw a red, shiny bumper on the front of the cart: a race car.

“I couldn’t stop because my car couldn’t fit it,” Vaclavik said. “But I called everybody I knew with a big car, and was like, ‘I need the shopping cart’.”

After arriving home, Vaclavik said he drove back to the spot with his mother. The cart was so large that they had to put the backseat down and leave the trunk open, while ensuring the cart didn’t fall out of the car.

He said they took the cart to Deja Brew Coffeehouse and Deli, his family-owned cafe that the Vaclaviks have been running since 1995, where his vintage pop-up shop — BRVintage  — is also located.

The red shopping cart is now home to his shop’s $5 bin, where buyers can find affordable items.

“If you only have $1 or $5, I’m not gonna turn that down, especially when it’s our community,” Vaclavik said.

Vaclavik said he first fell in love with vintage clothing in 2023 when he was a first-year at Washington and Jefferson College.

He said one of his soccer teammates took his friends and him to Goodwill, where he sifted through a long line of blue bins to find clothes.

“You can literally just pick through it, find stuff to get and then you pay by the pound,” Vaclavik said. “It was my first time doing that, and I’ve honestly just been hooked ever since.”

Vaclavik said he launched his Instagram account, _BRVintage_, on Aug. 10, 2024. Two days later, he launched his Depop account, a platform to sell second-hand clothing online, and made over 150 sales since.

Vaclavik’s pop-up shop at Deja Brew launched on Feb. 17, 2025, and displays BRVintage’s logo: AI-generated cartoons of Vaclavik’s two kittens, Lily and Mitchell, wearing chains.

Vaclavik said the inspiration for his vintage shop’s logo comes from HomeBase, a skateshop located across the street from Deja Brew.

“Their Instagram profile is the owner’s dog and a shirt,” he said. “I’ve followed them for a long time, so I was like, ‘Oh wait, that would be cool, I feel like I could do both my cats’.”

Vaclavik is a junior in college, so when he’s gone most of the school year his dad manages the shop.

He said many of the items he sells online are not physically with him at college.

Vaclavik said there are shelves upon shelves of clothing at his family home, waiting to be sold and shipped off. His father will often sort through piles of clothing to find, pack and ship items to buyers.

At school, Vaclavik keeps himself busy.

Dayton Siegler, a student at the University of Maryland and a former student athlete at Washington and Jefferson College, said Vaclavik is always taking pictures and uploading them on his social media for the vintage shop.

“I would say, out of all things in his life, he puts the most time and effort into this,” Siegler said.

Dylan Remsberg, a former student at Washington and Jefferson College, knew Vaclavik from being on the soccer team together as first-years. He said Vaclavik’s enthusiasm about vintage clothing sparked his peers’ passions for thrifting.

“He’d always bring stuff to his dorm, and he’d always show us what he brought back from Goodwill,” Remsberg said. “He gave me a fleece and a couple of shirts. I would never thrift before I met him, but honestly, he completely changed my perspective.”

Vaclavik said his favorite part about running his in-person shop is finding vintage clothing in Bethlehem.

“I’ll be able to go out and see one of those shirts that I used to wear as a 10-year-old, and it’d be in an extra large so I can wear it now, or later on in life,” Vaclavik said.

He said one of his goals is to make sure everyone in the community has access to the vintage items in his shop, regardless of financial limitations. The red race car he found in August was key to accomplishing that mission.

Previously a cardboard box, Vaclavik said the red race car captured his eye because it was visually pleasing, and it didn’t require shoppers to kneel down to reach $5 clothing items.

“My dad gets all kinds of people that come in the shop, so not everyone might be able to spend $50 to $100 on a T-shirt,” Vaclavik said. “If a group of kids come in after school and they see something they like, I’ll have affordable pieces for them.”

Remsberg said Vaclavik is a humble and generous person.

Vaclavik said he runs his shop with a deep and personal understanding of the circumstances his in-person shoppers experience.

He said he has received support from the Bethlehem community, especially from frequent customers of his family’s coffee shop.

“The people that I know around Bethlehem that I might not remember as a kid come in, and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the coolest thing ever’,” Vaclavik said. “They see me go from a very small child sitting on a couch in the shop, to a grown adult with his own business.”

Though both of Vaclavik’s friends described him as “unserious” and “light-hearted,” Vaclavik said he’s serious and passionate about BRVintage. He hopes to one day make it his full time profession.

“If I could generate enough success in order to do this full time, that would be awesome,” Vaclavik said. “I just have fun doing it. Doing this as a fulltime job after college would be a dream come true.”