Manhattan vintage shoppers will tell you everything good is on the Lower East Side. Brooklyn shoppers will swear by Williamsburg. And then there’s Astoria, sitting across the East River, watching everyone overlook it. That’s how it’s been for years. That’s how locals quietly prefer it.
If you ever start asking around in Queens for the best place to find a 1960s coat, a 1970s sundress, or a piece of costume jewelry that looks like it came out of a great-aunt’s drawer in 1958, the same name keeps surfacing. Loveday 31. Tucked on a residential block of 31st Avenue, easy to walk past, impossible to forget.
The Shop
From outside, Loveday 31 is a small, painted storefront with a hand-lettered sign and a window display that turns over often enough to reward repeat visits. Inside, it’s bigger than it looks. The space stretches back, organized by era and by mood rather than by size. There’s a long rack of dresses where the 1960s shifts hang next to the 1990s slip dresses next to the 1970s prairie pieces, and the front of the store is a glass case full of jewelry that the owners pull out and hand to you if you ask.
The curation skews feminine without being precious about it. There are mens’ pieces — jackets, knit sweaters, the occasional pair of bowling shoes — but the heart of the shop is the women’s clothing and the accessories. Plastic bracelets in colors you can’t find anymore. Statement belts. Wide-brimmed fedoras. Silk scarves bundled together by palette. The sort of stuff that an estate sale on the Upper East Side would have priced at three times what Loveday charges.
Why It’s Different
Two things make Loveday 31 stand out in a crowded city of vintage stores. The first is that the owners actually shop the floor. They’re sourcing from estate sales across Queens and Long Island, and they buy with an eye. You won’t find generic 2000s fast fashion castoffs filling out the racks. The pieces are good because they were chosen.
The second is the integration of new local jewelry alongside the vintage. The shop carries a rotating roster of jewelry from independent designers based in NYC, displayed in the same cases as the vintage costume pieces. The effect is that a buyer can leave with a $40 vintage clip earring set and a $90 contemporary ring from a Queens-based maker in the same bag. It feels like a small gallery as much as a store.
The Atmosphere
The shop is a Queens shop. The staff knows the regulars. There are usually one or two locals browsing slowly, and the conversation drifts — what’s coming out of estates this season, what just got priced, who’s hosting a vintage fair next month. If you walk in cold and ask a question, you’ll get a real answer. If you walk in to hide from the rain, nobody minds.
The pace is slower than Manhattan vintage hunting. There’s no panic that the good piece will be gone in twenty minutes. The store turns over, but it turns over at Astoria speed, which is a relief if you’ve been doing the Lower East Side circuit and your nervous system needs a break.
Insider Tip: Loveday is open Thursday through Sunday with the rest of the week by appointment — that’s the part most travel guides bury. If you can’t make a Thursday or Friday afternoon, call the shop and book an appointment for a quieter weekday slot. The owners are happy to set aside time for serious vintage hunters, and you’ll get the place essentially to yourself.
How to Visit
Address: 33-06 31st Avenue, Astoria, NY 11106
Nearest Subway: N/W to Broadway (Astoria); about a five-minute walk east along 31st Avenue
Hours: Thursday–Saturday, noon–7 p.m.; Sunday, noon–6 p.m.; Monday–Wednesday by appointment
Phone: (718) 728-4057
Price range: Most clothing pieces fall between roughly $30 and $150; jewelry runs lower; statement vintage outerwear sometimes higher
Make a Day of It
Astoria rewards a slow afternoon. Loveday 31 sits in the part of the neighborhood that’s still primarily residential — tree-lined streets, two- and three-story brick buildings, the occasional Greek bakery on the corner. Pair the visit with a long walk to Astoria Park for the Hell Gate Bridge view, or a coffee at one of the cafes scattered along 31st Avenue. The N train back to Manhattan takes about twenty minutes from Broadway-Astoria. You can be on the Lower East Side by sundown if you really want to compare notes.
But you might not want to. That’s the thing about Loveday 31. Most of the people who find it stop pretending Manhattan vintage is the whole map.
If You Like This
For more thoughtfully curated NYC vintage hunts, see our full Vintage & Thrift archive, including spotlights on Brooklyn’s hidden flea markets and the Manhattan shops that fund nonprofits one estate sale at a time.
Loveday 31 has been in Astoria for over a decade. It hasn’t moved. It hasn’t expanded into a chain. It just sits where it sits, on a quiet block, slowly building the kind of vintage inventory that the rest of the city eventually figures out it has been missing.
