Recently, I bought an old record player, a Realistic Lab-2200, made by RadioShack in the 1980s. I’m enjoying my purchase—it’s spinning Al Green’s “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” as I write this. But more notable is the place where I bought it: Mom N Pop Antiques on Georgia Avenue in Park View. The beloved, cluttered shop recently shut its doors after 39 years.
I grew up about ten blocks from the store. Every weekend, a treasure trove of vintage furniture would be assembled in a line outside the entrance, with patrons waiting to get in like at a nightclub. It was part of the backdrop of Georgia Avenue, long outlasting other notables such as the Madness clothing store and the Black Hole nightclub.
Mom N Pop was founded in 1986 by Bill Sims, who was born into the antiques business: His father, Billy G. Sims Sr., operated a shop in Georgetown (which later moved to First and Rhode Island, in the old Sylvan Theater building). Billy “loved to buy and sell,” Sims says, a trait he passed on to his son. “Mom and Dad would go up to Pennsylvania, buy older furniture, clean it up a bit,” and then resell it, he recalls. “He would put us to work, adding coats of lacquer.”
After high school, Sims attended UDC, then found himself with a college degree and no idea what to do next. He did a stint in the Peace Corps, building wells in the Kalahari Desert. Sims’s father suggested the career that would be his livelihood for the next 40 years, advising him to open his own place. He even provided the name: Mom N Pop was a tribute to him and his wife, Edith—Sims’s mom—who worked beside him in their shop until its closing.
For years, Mom N Pop served as a more affordable option for local families in need of furniture. Why has Sims finally shut the place down? “I haven’t had a weekend off in decades,” he says. “I have mixed feelings about closing. I love what I have been doing for the past 40 years.” Now he’s looking forward to some downtime with family and travel.
The store will be missed, especially by people like me who have felt connected to it for so many years. I asked Sims why the shop was such a community staple. He cited “the R word” (respect) and the Golden Rule. “I have been treated so well by the people who live here,” he says. “I just try to reciprocate.”
This article appears in the June 2026 issue of Washingtonian.
