Kati Tierney and Joe Walsh own Local Mystique. The couple’s store, at 398 Court St., specializes in thrifts, arts, and antiquary. That includes stained glass, local artwork, jewelry, clothing, and “wordly collectibles.”
This is part of an occasional series of short “as told to” profiles by Plymouth resident Carl Mastandrea, who describes himself as a “photographer, teacher, and storyteller.” This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Plymouth has been a big place for us for many years. My whole family lives here. We grew up here. We’ve lived in all parts of Plymouth, from Manomet to North Plymouth and everywhere in between. The funny thing is that we met in Plymouth, at a PCIS (Plymouth Community Intermediate School). Yeah, middle school. We were in a play together, and we were the same narrator. It was Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, and we were Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain, so we had to trade off the mustache and the wig. We realized it many years later, after we met each other again as adults.
We always wanted to have a business of some kind, but never really had an idea of what to do. We liked to do thrifting and antique shopping and stuff like that and then it just kind of dawned on me one day that this could be a viable business opportunity. During the pandemic, I think I was going a little stir crazy, so we started putting this idea together. The vision was to have the quintessential antique shop with big windows. We thought it would take us six months, a year maybe, to find a suitable location but then within a couple of weeks of us starting to talk about it, this place went up for rent. The timing lined up perfectly. It’s an antique building, part of the Cordage Houses, so the building has its own little historical charm to it.
There’s just something about North Plymouth that we have always loved. It’s a little off the beaten path, which is kind of like us, you know. We get a good mix of not only local people, but tourists, too, in the summer and there’s more foot traffic than we expected to have here. It’s all ages, all demographics, different people from all walks of life. There’s a lot of locals who have found us that try to help us, that like what we’re doing here. The big thing for us was being able to interact with people within our community. That’s the greatest thing.
It’s good for our own personal growth too, learning how to interact with all different kinds of people. It makes us better at communicating, which I just think is good for our own development as human beings. The cool thing, too, is just the constant learning. When you come across stuff that’s from different centuries, different parts of the world, you never stop learning. We’re never going to be experts at everything so that’s another thing that keeps this interesting for us.
We love having an in-person business. People love to shop here and then they find something that takes them back or something that catches their eye, triggering something in their brain. It’s a lot of fun.