{"id":21515,"date":"2024-10-02T00:20:13","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T06:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=21515"},"modified":"2024-09-30T15:22:54","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T21:22:54","slug":"jane-drussel-of-janes-artifacts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/02\/jane-drussel-of-janes-artifacts\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Drussel of Jane\u2019s Artifacts"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Isaiah Frizzell<\/em><\/p>\n

What makes a town worth living in? The mountains, the sunlight, the local businesses, and the community, of course. The people who live, work and play in your town are the people that create and maintain the fabric of the community. Imagine a town without a community: strangers who briskly run into each other on the off chance they\u2019re not on their phone or laptop? A video game of non-playable-characters and inaccessible terrain? Horrifying. When you get off your computer to take a walk or drive to the market, you step into shops just to see what\u2019s going on, what\u2019s happening around town. Everyone holds a different facet of the diamond that is community. It can be the people you\u2019ll meet who define how you value your surroundings.
\nThis week we look at who makes the Wood River Valley the special place it is in the hearts of the community. These are the people you will run into and talk with\u2014talk shop, talk weather, crack jokes or maybe even partner with for business. The community is for the people, with the people, by the people. It\u2019s real life happening right there in your neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Jane\u2019s Artifacts<\/strong>
\nJane Drussel is perhaps one of the most well-known businesswomen in the Valley. Drussel is the owner of Jane’s Artifacts, an absolutely unique and community-defining shop in downtown Hailey. For sure, Drussel has an aura and many call her a comedian. At a spry 84 years old, she can be found working the aisles and phones of her jam-packed art supply, paper goods, gift shop.
\nA funny thing happened in 2019 and it comes up in nearly every conversation.
\n\u201cWe still advertise our open houses, which we used to do before COVID. Everything seems to be before COVID!\u201d Drussel opines on the way things have changed, and not that the store or products have changed, it\u2019s that people have, dramatically. Jane\u2019s Artifacts\u2019 open houses are community events of legend. A packed house with food, drink, prizes and great company in a stimulating environment. If you\u2019re savvy, you take one look around her store and immediately get ideas for jewelry, scrapbooks, journaling, toys, games, or business. They sell a wide variety of essentials you\u2019ll need in any office and can quickly grab there instead of forfeiting your attention and time to Amazon\u2019s analysis paralysis machine. In fact, during the pandemic, for this very reason, Jane\u2019s Artifacts was deemed an essential service. Let that sink in.<\/p>\n

Local Flavor<\/strong>
\nThe locals of community-oriented towns genuinely LIKE supporting the local shops and chatting with the personalities who keep the vibe going every day. Consider the cold, empty alternative, mentioned above.
\nDrussel has lived in the Valley since 1970. She arrived with her first husband from Utah and quickly became part of the culture. After working at JJ Office supply and managing the Bank of Idaho, she eventually helped Gemini Art, a loft above Atkinsons\u2019, grow from selling strictly art supplies into a diversified market of office essentials, but Jane had a dream.
\nDrussel needed her own shop. She found a small basement in Giacobbi Square just after the fire and started Jane\u2019s Paper Place. \u201cWe had to wash every single peg, it was all smoky from the fire!\u201d Drussel laughs. After months of hard labor and exacting business acumen, she had her shop. As the concept grew, she also opened a Christmas store in Ketchum and the present location in Hailey\u2014three stores total.
\nIn 2004, an investment group would buy these from her but after they went under in 2009, during the huge economic downturn, she decided to open again but under a different name.
\n\u201cThe building was sitting here empty, and obviously nobody was going to rent it, you know, at that stage of the economy. So I reopened a store. I called Georgia [a well-known JA personality] and I said, \u201cI’m going to reopen the store. Wanna come back to work?\u201d She said, \u2018Oh yeah!\u2019 So she came back and her, myself and Rachel, we reopened the store. And, you know, we didn’t have much inventory in here for a while, but it gradually grew and did really, really, really well up until COVID, and then things, life, changed in all kinds of ways. And then, unfortunately, I lost my husband, who passed away five years ago.\u201d The current Hailey location is that store, now known as Jane\u2019s Artifacts. Drussel\u2019s husband she met on a fateful evening at Sam\u2019s, a club in Bellevue, where Mahoney\u2019s now sits.
\nBruce Willis, Demi Moore, Barbra Streisand and many celebrities have frequented her shop, but Drussel reminds employees, \u201cyYu need to leave them alone, let them wander around.\u201d But, naturally, a high-school-aged employee approached Willis once, for a photograph. \u201cI just looked at him [Willis] and kinda grinned and said, \u201cHe\u2019s young.\u201d Drussel laughs with a hint of embarrassment. Willis took it in stride and posed for a happy photograph with the young man. You should ask her yourself about a funny incident with Streisand.
\nWhat do you feel about community?
\n\u201cI try to be very involved in the community. I was president of the chamber for several years and I\u2019ve been very active in Rotary [Club] and very involved in city matters. I\u2019ll be 85, my next birthday, so it\u2019s time I let some of the younger people take over responsibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

What do you like to do outside of the shop?<\/strong>
\n\u201cWe used to laugh, I had several fetishes, one was socks and the other was ribbon.\u201d Drussel\u2019s laugh is contagious and the statement almost becomes an inside joke if you know what she keeps in her \u2018secret\u2019 cabinet. \u201cI paint a bit. When my husband passed away I took up quilting and I got really obsessed. I started embroidering squares and then got involved with the fabric store here and went to their Moonlight Sews and fabric has become my fetish. I can\u2019t go into a fabric store without buying something.\u201d She has three machines on her kitchen table. Always community minded, Drussel makes quilts for the men’s halfway house, hospice, the Senior Connection and pillow cases for Camp Rainbow Gold.<\/p>\n

The Future of Hailey<\/strong>
\n\u201cIt\u2019s kind of interesting, as the years have gone by, how I\u2019ve seen the community change. When we moved here, Hailey was a booming little town. It had everything. There was no Costco, no box stores, nobody drove to Twin to buy groceries. Nobody did that. You just didn\u2019t do that. We had the Triple S, we had The Merc, which was an old-fashioned general store with groceries and clothing. I bought all my kids\u2019 clothes there. We had lots of little shops. We had an old-fashioned fountain over where, I think, the Jiu Jitsu place is now. It was Broyles Pharmacy. All the business guys would come in the morning and have their coffee and gossip. They were worse than women! It was the guys thing. It was an old-fashioned drug store and this was a booming place. As the years went by you could see the shops kind of go away. Costco opened up and the energy, the whole demeanor, changed. I don\u2019t know what the future will be.
\n\u201cI would hate to see our store go away. This is a thing of the past. People come in here and they\u2019re amazed. They always say, \u201cI wish we had a store like this in our town. But everything has changed. There\u2019s challenges now with the way people buy everything and never leave their houses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why should you pop into Jane\u2019s Artifacts?<\/strong>
\n\u201cWe love to give hugs, hugs are free. We have the coffee pot on all the time, come get some coffee! I\u2019ve been known to tell a joke or two [understatement noted as everyone laughs]. We try to offer that old-fashioned service where we have a one on one with our customers. Every day people come in and say, \u201cOh my god, we\u2019re so glad you\u2019re here!\u201d and I don\u2019t think it’s because we have the best stuff or the best deals but it\u2019s just a happy, friendly place to go to.\u201d
\nThe community is made from the people you\u2019ll meet. Find any and all manner of art supply, stationery, office supplies, toys and gifts at great prices. Jane\u2019s Artifacts is at 106 S. Main St., Hailey, Idaho 83333.
\nThe store does not have a website and will deliver merchandise to your door. Call at (208) 788-0848.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Isaiah Frizzell What makes a town worth living in? The mountains, the sunlight, the local businesses, and the community, of course. The people who live, work and play in your town are the people that create and maintain the fabric of the community. Imagine a town without a community: strangers who briskly run into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21516,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-commentary","8":"category-people-that-you-meet"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21517,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21515\/revisions\/21517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}