BORDENTOWN CITY: Strumming an entrepreneurial note

By Birgitta Wolfe,Managing Editor
   BORDENTOWN CITY — There’s a new guy in town and he can build you a guitar or teach you to play one or sell the one you’ve got.
   Twenty-nine-year-old Michael Virok opened Bordentown Guitar Rescue on Feb. 4 at 203 Farnsworth Ave. in a former psychic’s salon.
   ”So far the spirits have been good. There are no messages on any mirrors,” said the owner of the new consignment shop.
   The spirits may not be involved, but Mr. Virok’s career in the guitar business does have a serendipitous bent.
   When he was 16, he thought it would be cool to have a guitar and borrowed $75 from his grandmother to buy one from a friend.
   The friend showed up with a duffel bag but when he opened it he found the guitar had been taken apart and was all in pieces, he recalled.
   Figuring out by himself how to put it back together again was the impetus of his career. He received his luthier certificate in 2007 to build stringed instruments.
   Happenstance also figured in finding the space for his new shop, when on a lark, he and some friends on an outing decided “let’s take a walk through Bordentown.” The result was that on Christmas Eve, Mr. Virok was handed the keys to 203 Farnsworth.
   The next month was spent painting and fixing up the place for the Feb. 4 opening.
   ”I’d like to think my grandmother is smiling down on me right now,” he said.
   Mr. Virok plans to give guitar lessons for beginners at the shop. Peter Plaxa, of Philadelphia will give advanced guitar lessons and Lorie Hoos will give piano lessons.
   The store is open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays.
   Next year he plans to expand the business to include guitar repairs.
   Mr. Virok also plays and composes music but said the only audience for that is his wife, Christine, and their two dogs, Jake, a Yorkshire terrier, and Gus, a rescued dog that is a Chihuahua-greyhound mix (small dog, long legs). It was Gus’ status as a rescued dog that gave Mr. Virok the idea for the shop’s name.
   Expansion is already on the shop owner’s mind. He said he can envision a New Hope Guitar Rescue, a Princeton Guitar Rescue, and so on, concentrating on small communities.
   For now though, he is concentrating on Bordentown City and was about to deliver his application to join the Downtown Bordentown Association of merchants.