Just off West 11th Avenue, a small industrial area harbors Ghost Town Outfitters. The warehouse holds racks of vintage tees, locally made jeans and countless pieces of mesmerizing clothing. Parker Hayes, the shop’s creator and owner, felt gratifying community connections diminishing over the past decade and worsening with the pandemic. Pining for a morsel of the world he experienced as a teenager, he decided to extend his online resale business to the physical world. He opened GTO on Dec. 15, 2022. 

In the early 2000s, a teenage Hayes spent hours rifling through the Goodwill bins outlet with his friends. They were looking for sellable pieces in the thrift store rejects that filled the containers. Everything they gathered was taken to sell at Portland’s Hawthorne Boulevard thrift shops.  

“We had this economy of stuff people didn’t want that we took in to get the stuff we wanted,” Hayes said.  

He and his friends resold clothing and CDs they acquired from Goodwill bins, estate sales, dumpster diving and anywhere in between.  

“I can’t tell you how many times we found stacks of CDs that people had thrown away because they were done with them. We’d pull those out of the dumpster, take them to Everyday Music [a music store], sell them and then buy the music we wanted,” he said. 

Hayes’s fashion interests during this time were dictated by his rotating musical infatuations. When he exclusively listened to punk rock, Dickies and Converse were his staples. He got into metal, and skinny jeans and metal tees took over. When inspired by Ska, suits, checkerboard ties and platform Doc Marten boots made up his uniform. Nowadays, he has 

the influence of more than two decades working with fashion to guide his personal curations.  

Hayes continued reselling as an adult. By selling clothes online, he forged a bridge from his adult life to his childhood one. But, exclusively online sales can lack aspects of community that make reselling personable and fun. A spark of human connection —before everything was  online, before the pandemic and  before, as Hayes said, “things got more and more streamlined, more expensive, and less inviting.”  

Hayes decided he would open a brick-and-mortar store, and in 2021, he was ready to start the process.  

“There was so much more that needed to be done in terms of community, and something to breathe a little bit of life into the day-to-day in Eugene,” Hayes said.  

He scoured Eugene for a warehouse to rent. But after six months of searching and still no warehouse, he began to rethink his plans. Then, in what Hayes called “a god-inspired turn of events,” an old friend of his turned up, looking for someone to rent an extra warehouse he had stumbled upon.  

With his new warehouse anchoring his online selling to the physical world, the community Hayes desired to nurture had a place to grow. What began as a pile of clothes on a warehouse floor blossomed into a space saturated with personality. It became a space to thrift or hang out, and where one can be a part of the community regardless of their level of capitalistic contribution.  

“When I opened [GTO] up, I wanted to curate that feeling I remember when we were kids, of being able to have a place where we could just go, and it was just cool, and we weren’t required to do anything,” He said. 

GTO now houses racks of clothing, but Hayes is adamant about keeping $1 piles, $2 and $3 bins and $5 racks. 

“[Everything] ranges from absolutely free, to super cheap, to expensive if you want,” Hayes said. “If you want to spend a dollar, you can spend a dollar.”   

GTO culminates the enchanting feeling of having nothing to do, yet somewhere to be.  

“If you want to spend absolutely nothing and just hang out and talk, you can do that. If you want to watch a movie, you can sit here and watch a movie,” Hayes continued.  

Tristan Yaroscak, a GTO employee, frequented the store before he began working for Hayes. Now, he contributes to bettering visitors’ experiences, and sells his handmade jewelry.  

“It’s incredible to work for somebody you look up to that is doing something you truly believe in. I haven’t found that in my prior work  experience. It makes a huge difference; it makes me happy and excited to work,” Yaroscak said. 

Hayes’s construction of GTO created a space that encourages community and emanates non-mundane familiarity.  

“My puzzle piece finally fit somewhere, and I finally feel like I’m at home,” Yaroscak said. 

It’s not about the clothes; they can be sold online. It’s the environment, the space itself and the community it curates: That’s GTO.  

“It’s just stuff, right? We’re moving through it, and people pick it up ’cause they like it,” Hayes said. “I just want to have that time and place in the future, 20 years from now, where people sit back and they go, ‘Dude, remember when we used to go to that place, and it was just chill, it was just cool, we just hung out and sometimes bought cool clothes?’ That’s what I want; that’s the whole point.”