There is a new style and new energy joining the mix of small independent retailers growing on Capitol Hill’s E Pike.

“It’s very vibrant,” Roger Maldonado tells CHS. “Us moving there, we’re making it even more vibrant. We’re open late, play music… it feels more like a safe environment when people are out.”

Brothers Roger and Cesar Maldonado have opened a permanent home for their streetwear and events brand Mediums Collective in the midst of the mix of E Pike small businesses including some longtime neighborhood classics like Doghouse Leathers, Babeland, and the Stitches fabric shop. Newbies like mushroom fashion (yes, mushroom fashion) provider Sporelust! are now adding another layer of good times and shopping to the street.

Roger Maldonado tells CHS Capitol Hill was a natural home for the first store for Mediums after the brand has grown through pop-ups and street markets with many of the events taking place around the Hill. The neighborhood’s fashions also are a natural fit.

In a twist of fortune, the space Mediums now calls home was also where street fashion brand Alive and Well from Li’l Woody’s and Fat’s Chicken owner Marcus Lalario grew on Capitol HIll.

“Fashion and streetwear is very alive and well on Capitol Hill and in Seattle,” Maldonado said.

The Maldonado brothers celebrated their late 2022 opening with a banger fashion show to start 2023 that filled the E Pike store with creators, artists, and music.

“We throw events,” Maldonado said. “Now that I have my own storefront, I was like, ‘Let’s go ahead and have a production.'”

E Pike has also given Maldonado the opportunity to grow Mediums as part of a community of friends. The Maldonados and Shannon Mendoza and Jesus McCloskey of the Late Night Vintage Market that opened down the street last fall are tight and are helping each other’s businesses while working together to help foster the scene around the street.

It’s a bright light in the night — and sometimes loud — burst of energy. Maldonado says some of the lowrider parades you may have seen cruising and putting on a show on E Pike and across the Hill on Friday or Saturday nights are part of the Mediums scene and circle of friends.

Roger Maldonado says he is working for Mediums to also become part of wider community and culture efforts on Capitol HIll, collaborating with On the Block to organize this coming summer’s edition of the Pike/Pine street market series.

Newcomers Mediums, and Late Night Vintage Market, and longtimers like Throwbacks NW are also working on ways to collaborate — a sor of “Vintage Streetwear Coalition,” Maldonado says.

He sees the Mediums shop growing as “a creative space” with more fashion events, listening parties, and networking nights to organize the scenes and cultures surrounding his work.

“We always wanted to be on Capitol Hill,” Maldonado says. “It’s the center of creative culture in Seattle.”

For Mediums, it is about the street, lowriders, and the Maldonados as Mexican culture-influence creators. The street scene, now, is growing on E Pike.

“It was either there or a mall ,” Maldonado said. “We happened to find one on Capitol Hill.”

Mediums Collective is located at 705 E Pike. Learn more at mediumscollective.com.

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