Vintage clothing hunters in Bangor now head to 54 Columbia St, where Red Rabbit Bazaar sells hand-picked secondhand clothing, footwear, and accessories in a street-level storefront it moved into in early 2024, reopening there on March 1 of that year after outgrowing its previous space. The relocation was covered by local outlets including the Bangor Daily News and WABI, both of which framed the move as an upgrade for a shop that had built a following among vintage lovers looking for curated racks rather than bulk bins.
What separates Red Rabbit Bazaar from a standard resale shop is how much of its calendar is built around community events rather than just retail hours. The store regularly hosts community clothing swaps, giving Bangor shoppers a way to trade out their own closets instead of only buying. It runs vinyl record takeover days that turn part of the shop into a temporary record store, along with skill-sharing workshops, tarot and intuitive readings, music and art showcases, and making-and-mending circles where visitors can learn to repair or alter their own garments. Downtown Bangor event listings regularly feature these gatherings, making the shop as much a small cultural venue as a clothing retailer.
The curation is the other half of the story. Rather than stocking whatever comes through the door, Red Rabbit Bazaar hand-selects its vintage clothing, footwear, and accessories, which keeps the racks focused on wearable, distinctive pieces instead of the hit-or-miss sprawl common at bigger thrift operations. That approach has made it a regular stop for shoppers building a specific look, whether that is 70s workwear, 90s band tees, or one-off accessories that do not show up at chain resale stores.
The shop sits in Bangor’s Columbia Street corridor, an area that has seen a wave of small independent businesses move in alongside the city’s historic downtown core, within easy walking distance of other shops and restaurants in the Bangor House neighborhood. Hours run Monday from noon to 6 p.m., closed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from noon to 6 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., giving shoppers a fairly wide window across most of the week to browse the current selection or catch one of the shop’s recurring events.
For anyone planning a visit, calling ahead at (207) 573-1744 or checking the shop’s event listings is worthwhile, since clothing swaps and workshops sometimes reshape the retail floor for a day. Between the rotating vintage stock and the steady schedule of swaps, workshops, and showcases, the shop functions less like a single-purpose store and more like a small community hub built around secondhand style.
Red Rabbit Bazaar is a hand-curated vintage clothing shop in downtown Bangor, Maine, known for combining a carefully selected resale rack with recurring community events like clothing swaps, vinyl takeovers, and mending circles.
