Malls aren’t what they used to be — and in one corridor of the 50-year-old Lebanon Valley Mall in south-Central Pennsylvania, the contrast between past and present is especially sharp.
Once upon a time, Payless ShoeSource and Victoria’s Secret were next-door neighbors in the shopping center.
These days, you won’t find lingerie or sneakers in that spot. Instead, the space is outfitted with axe-throwing lanes, a soon-to-open mead hall, display cases filled with handcrafted knives and swords, and a forge where customers can learn to make their own metal goods.
The Drunken Smithy opened in the former Victoria’s Secret in 2023, and has since expanded into the two adjacent storefronts.
Co-owners Greg Ramsey and Eitri Jones launched the business in 2016 out of an industrial building in Palmyra. The pair met a decade before at Milton Hershey School, where they worked as house parents. They hatched the idea for an early version of the Drunken Smithy one night over drinks.
“After about 10 years of raising middle school kids … it can burn you out a little bit,” Jones told PA Local. “So we were ready to move on, and we thought, what is the most fun? And we figured swords, brewing, and forging.”
They decided to call it the Drunken Smithy, “because your swords deserve to be hammered.” (But no, you can’t drink while you’re forging.)
If the concept brings to mind a renaissance fair, that’s not a coincidence. Ramsey worked at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire for 17 years, doing everything from artistic direction to stunt coordination to playing the king.
Ramsey had an interest in swords and a built-in customer base through his connections, but little blacksmithing experience, he said. Jones, on the other hand, had been a metalworking hobbyist since childhood. They started out doing stage combat workshops, Jones explained, then pivoted to selling the rapiers they’d used in the classes and making more.
They soon realized it was difficult to sustain a business simply by selling swords, and started offering blacksmith workshops. Attendees can pay between $160 and $950 to forge knives, axes, swords, wands (from railroad spikes), horseshoe hearts, and the like.
Demand for classes heated up when they reopened after a COVID-19 shutdown. They started providing more workshops and expanding their staff, which has since grown to more than 20 metalworkers and artisans. Social media and word of mouth have driven business, they said, and their classes draw people from all over Pennsylvania and nearby states. Ramsey estimated that 60% to 70% of participants live an hour or more away.
The workshops allow participants to start getting “up and on [their] feet” within about half an hour, Ramsey said. Drunken Smithy instructors offer general guidance throughout the process: forging, grinding away mistakes, and heat treating and tempering the projects. A typical knife workshop lasts about three and a half hours, while sword-making sessions are scheduled for seven hours.
“We try to make it a whole experience,” Ramsey said. “You come in, you do the design for your knife and then you learn your safety and whatnot. And then you get in there and you really start doing it. Minimal demo.”
In Ramsey’s view, forging is pretty intuitive. It’s kind of like shaping Play-Doh or clay, he said — “except for 1,800 degrees.”
Asha Prihar / Spotlight PA
The Drunken Smithy plans to open a mead hall next door pending state approval for its liquor license.
The pair started looking for a new space after learning their rented Palmyra location was set to be demolished. Lebanon Valley Mall, it turned out, had the elements they needed to build a forge, like natural gas and extensive electrical service.
They weren’t sure it was going to work out. “We really didn't think they were gonna approve putting a forge in the mall,” Jones said, “but it turns out, they did.” It took about a year to properly refurb the initial storefront.
The choice to take on the Drunken Smithy as a tenant was a “no brainer,” mall manager Michelle Tuscano told PA Local by email. In today’s retail environment, a small mall filled with traditional stores is “unable to be sustainable,” she wrote. The mall started having “more open minds” toward less traditional tenants after Lifeway Church, a decade-old Christian congregation, started moving in in 2017.
Despite these shifts, Tuscano feels “optimistic” about the mall’s future as “more of a community service and experience driven center.”
“We are celebrating 50 years this year and we plan on being around for 50 more,” Tuscano wrote.
The Drunken Smithy takes advantage of the mall atmosphere — particularly its size — by holding about four mall-wide festivals per year, which they usually co-sponsor with longtime mall pizzeria Mancino’s and the St. James Players, a community theater group.
The last festival had over 50 vendors, Ramsey said, as well as musicians, actors, a silk aerial artist, and a live Dungeons & Dragons game.
“They are kind of like the Renaissance Faire, but small [and] free to get in,” Jones said of the events, “and inside, so we can do it in the middle of the winter or the heat of the summer.”
Beyond the forge and the festivals, Jones and Ramsey have more irons in the fire. They recently added an “Artisan Alley” with workstations for copper, leather, and other media. And in their newly installed mead hall, they plan to serve the honeyed drink as soon as they get approval from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.
In the future, Jones said, they’d like to offer food and feature live music. Ultimately, it’s all about creating a “rich experience,” he said.
“Not a place where you come and there's like, just big TVs,” Jones said. “I mean, you might as well be at home on your couch … when you come here, it's gonna be fun.”
