There will soon be one less place in Seattle to buy a Bulgarian army overcoat, a Polish military gas mask, French air force overalls, and MREs.
Surplus Too Army-Navy in SODO lost its lease and will be leaving the neighborhood at the end of January after nearly 40 years on Lander Street.
“This is all I’ve known, my whole life, this store has been here, and it’s been in my family,” said Sean Cohen, whose family opened the business in the late 1970s.
They recently posted signs saying they lost their lease and are trying to sell off decades’ worth of inventory, including durable clothing, battlefield-tested gear, and a lot of camo.
“It’s really sad, I’m going to miss it because I do all my shopping here, pants with cargo pockets are very useful,” said Kevin Katschke, who came in covered with camouflage outerwear on a recent chilly morning.
The Cohen family collects their inventory from vendors across the country, who specialize in moving all of the extra goods the world's military powers don't need or want.
These days, people aren't shopping in stores the as much as they once did, and military surplus stores in many cities have gone out of business.
The Cohens haven't decided if they'll reopen in a different location.
“It's all up in the air,” Cohen said.
“This has always been a kind of working-class neighborhood, and I think that the combination of the location, our customers, and the stuff we sell, is the reason we’ve been able to be around for 40 years,” he said.
