I've always admired vintage anything: Vehicles, furniture, radios, clocks. Vintage kitchen appurtenances. Vintage people especially. When I was 17 or 18, still in high school, I had an afternoon job working for an antique restoration & sales business in downtown Snohomish, WA. This was awesome: I had picked up some restoration skills and a deeper appreciation for antiques. The three of us transformed some rather raggedy appearing furniture into something appearing nearly NEW. Some years later, though, we all learned that vintage and antique purists craved the original patina, the used and even overused, the "stressed" look ... the "I've-a-story-to-tell" look and feel to the item.

Sometimes I feel a little guilty about rendering that new look, but that's what many customers wanted then, so that's what many of us did for them. That's almost 50 years ago, and enough time for my earlier work to maybe have gotten a little beat up all over again. I hope so.

All of my life, I've enjoyed camping, fishing, 4-wheeling, hiking, exploring. Spontaneous road trips, sometimes with the directions considered as I was driving. Now and then, along the way, I collected and stashed odds and ends. Some vintage, some not. Just cool and unusual stuff to have around and dress up some corners and walls. Not much shop work or tinkering then.

A couple of years ago, I began collecting vintage radios requiring varying levels of rehabilitation, and test equipment and other hobbyist support paraphernalia. My wife got a little tired of seeing the developments on the dining room table, and allowed me the use of a spare bedroom as a workshop. The MadLab was born. Some would call it a functional man cave.

I was able to bring to life quite a few old radios. Some, not so much. I could not stop bringing them into the home, though, and it wasn't long before I realized that I needed to move some of these out before I acquired many more. Thankfully, good mother Etsy had vendor space available, and GeckoTheatre was created in September 2017. I listed some radios, and a few of them were sold around the 2017 holiday season.

My wife became interested in these goings-on, and it wasn't long before she inspired me to get some other things onto the GT shelves here, so I listed a few more odds and ends from hither and thither. Some came down from our attic and other hiding places around the home. We started going out more often to thrift stores and yard sales, and on road trips kept our eyes calibrated for antique shops and such. A few more vintage nic-nacs and bric-a-brac wound up on the shelves here in GT.

So anyway, yes, we're still fairly new to this, and have far more to discover than what you see has sold here, and what is currently listed. We're both still employees for somebody else (must eat, and have bills to pay), but are weekend warriors on the hunt for the vintage or unusual items to make available here in GeckoTheatre.

Hopefully, you see something you like. If you do, and even if you don't wish to purchase anything, please let us know by clicking on "Favorite Shop" and "Favorite Item" during your visit. And please keep coming back to visit.

Good luck to you in your own hobbies and creations!

Pete