Tanuki’s Trading Post reopens in Old Town

When Brandon Carlson and Onyx Bart’s Japan-centric hobby shop, Tanuki’s Trading Post, closed last year due to issues with its Michigan Avenue building, the husband-and-wife team knew their journey wasn’t over. Instead, they took a page from their namesake, the Japanese raccoon dog mythologized as a shapeshifter. 

“I was too stubborn to let it go under,” Carlson said.

After a tumultuous few months, the couple’s real estate agent told them the building that then housed Blue Owl Coffee in Old Town would soon be on the market. They jumped at the opportunity.

Tanuki’s Trading Post reopened in Old Town March 6, with a grand opening celebration Friday (April 10). The store offers the same anime figures, model building kits, manga and official art as before. The purple walls have stuck around and, most importantly to Carlson and Bart, the shop still has space for a screening room in the back, where regulars can hang out, watch anime and participate in a variety of meetups.

Carlson and Bart set out to build a community with Tanuki’s and are excited to say they’ve been successful. During the four months the shop was closed, the regulars who used to congregate in the back room stayed in touch with each other and employees via the shop’s Discord server and even organized hangouts at temporary spots in the interim. When work on the new location took longer than expected, leaving Bart and Carlson with only a day to move into the new shop, a group of customers turned up to help.

Despite the shop’s smaller size compared to the last, the new location is an upgrade in many ways, including the types of events it can accommodate.

One of Carlson and Bart’s main reasons for opening Tanuki’s Trading Post in the first place was to host painting days for model figures, turning a sometimes tedious and difficult activity into a community event. But their former location lacked the necessary ventilation. The back room at the new spot, though, was designed with coffee roasting in mind and has ventilation aplenty.

Carlson and Bart said the Old Town community has been very welcoming, with the Old Town Commercial Association helping spread the word about the move and other shop owners being excited to have Tanuki’s in the area.

And moving to Old Town is something of a homecoming for Carlson, whose great-grandfather Cecil LaManna once ran a bar in the neighborhood in addition to the distribution company Service Beer & Wine Sales.

“It only took 100 years,” he said, laughing. “And there’s a lot less alcohol involved this time.”