After owner’s Republican run for city council, Capitol Hill crystal shop The Vajra to close

The Vajra announcement

(Image: The Vajra)

A Broadway crystal shop is closing.

Its owner turned political candidate had said challenges with crime, drug use, and homelessness around The Vajra shaped her run this year for the Seattle City Council.

Now the crystal shop will be going “online only,” owner Rachael Savage said in a video posted to social media Thursday.

“We’re not really going anywhere. We’re just going virtual, baby,” Savage said, thanking Seattle “for 36 years.”

Savage said the Broadway store will close at the end of the year.

In the meantime, a clearance sale is underway.

Savage did not say why the shop is closing.

Savage had said challenges faced by the 500 block Broadway E store were a major part of shaping her decision to run as a Republican in Seattle’s 2025 elections, first for mayor, and then as a challenger hoping to unseat the city council’s most progressive incumbent, Alexis Mercedes Rinck.

Rinck trounced Savage with the shop owner falling short in nearly every precinct of the city except those between Broadmoor and Madison Park.

It is not clear how Savage’s political efforts will take shape going forward. In her “Savage Citizens” advocacy, Savage has also organized for an initiative to ban homeless camping in Seattle and has raised opposition to the planned development of a Downtown Emergency Service Center supportive housing facility on Belmont Ave.

In 2014, CHS visited Savage in a different time as the Broadway shop was marking its 25th anniversary. “Sometimes people live in the neighborhood and have never even noticed the shop,” The Vajra owner said at the time. “I tell them when the student is ready, the shop appears,” she said. “It’s kind of a magical thing.”

Over a decade later, you will now only be able to find Savage’s kind of magic at thevajra.com.

The Vajra is open “until the New Year” at 518 Broadway E.

A BRIEF HOLIDAY MESSAGE FROM CHS
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month — or choose your level of support