End of an era in Westport: After nearly 40 years, Kansas City shop to close
Though they own separate businesses, Russell Criswell and his mother, Barbara Criswell, have worked together at a string of Westport shops dating back to the late 1980s.
Inside their current location at 3936 Broadway Blvd., an invisible line splits the room. To the north is Vulcan’s Forge, Russell’s custom jewelry operation; to the south is Aquarius, a new-age metaphysical store owned by Barbara.
But after nearly 40 years of peddling enlightenment and precious metals, the Criswells announced this week that they’re retiring — closing both shops and selling the building.
“I’m ready for some rest,” Barbara said Tuesday from a stool in an office in the back of the shop. At 86, she’s got a potter’s wheel calling her name and a garden that needs tending.
Barbara opened Aquarius in 1989 as a humble attempt to give her daughter, who had recently suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident, something to do during the day. Russell had started in the jewelry business in 1986 with a small booth inside Westport Flea Market and gone on to found a business incubator at 43rd and Main streets. Barbara leased space from him there, stocking the space with tumbled stones and other metaphysical objects.
Her daughter never recovered enough to work at Aquarius. But the business thrived from the start.
“It really surprised both of us how quickly it developed and grew,” Barbara said. “It was always profitable.”
She soon quit her job as a marketing executive at a life insurance company and built Aquarius into the city’s go-to destination for seekers of crystals, tarot cards, incense and spiritual guidance. Vulcan’s Forge carved its own niche for high-quality custom jewelry and repairs, specializing in unique gold, silver and platinum designs.
The Criswells’ stores — they later operated at 424 Westport Road before moving to Broadway in 2004 — served as gathering places back when pagan and New Age practices were more confined to the fringes. Life drawing classes, singing bowl concerts, rope bondage groups: For decades, all have been welcome at their 2,500-square-foot meeting room upstairs, a sanctuary for Kansas City subcultures.
“We’ve always provided space for a lot of marginalized and underserved communities,” Barbara said. “People who can’t, or won’t, meet in a church basement knew that our shop was a safe, open, receptive, non-denominational space for them to meet like-minded people.”
The irony isn’t lost on the Criswells that they’re closing up shop at a time when many of the belief systems that underpin their shop — tarot readings, astrology, energy healing — are more popular than ever.
“The mainstream has caught up with us,” Russell said, citing the availability of items like crystals and metaphysical books that were once hard to find outside a place like Aquarius but are now a click away on Amazon. “I think (Barbara) is in some ways a victim of her own success.”
“Being outside of the mainstream, that was a big part of the fun of it,” Barbara said. “There’s less need for us now than there was 40 years ago.”
Theirs is not a story of business failure, though, Russell said.
“We’re going out on a high note,” he said. “Financially, we’re as successful as we’ve ever been.”
Though he’s technically retiring, Russell’s jeweler’s bench isn’t bound for a landfill. He intends to honor the many lifetime guarantees he’s extended to his customers and continue creating jewelry for private clients.
It’ll be another month, maybe six weeks before the two shops close, depending on how fast the inventory goes. In the meantime, many items in the store are 20% off this week, with deeper discounts likely as the weeks pass.
“We’ll miss the people, and we’ll miss Westport,” Russell said. “We’re so grateful for all these years in this community. And we understand that this (closing) does leave a void, and we hope to see it filled in a productive way. But it’s just time for us to go and do something else.”
