Find the Hidden Gems Before You Go

It is fruitless sometimes to look for lists of vintage clothing stores on the internet prior to taking a trip. You really have two choices:

1) Looking them up on an internet phone directory
2) Scouring individual vintage clothing sites on the internet to see if any happen to be at your destination

Both are very inefficient. Most local yellowpages on the internet fall a little short. Often, they are cluttered with all sorts of sites that are completely irrelevant.

I was actually very successful at finding what I needed on Local.com for my local search. For example, I tried "vintage clothing" in New York city and think that the site managed to find every shop that exists. It must be intuitive, because it not only brought up the category, but related ones that would be helpful to me. For example, some shops might classify themselves as consignment, rather than vintage and antique, and may have things that interest me.

Yellow page services, yelp.com, and citysearch are all integrated here, preventing you from having to shop around for your info. Sure, there are some sponsored links in there like at other sites, but the physical locations are much more abundant.

As always, take time to call the shop if you going to be there on a certain day to verify hours. Seasonal hours or closures for renovation and very recent store closings are not something that may be updated on the internet. If not, you may find the list of local restaurants in proximity to the store very handy to wait out the time.