Mari Gustafson proclaimed loudly, “Thank god, everyone in here is a freak!” as she entered the grand opening of Le Freak Boutique at 513 East 12th St. in the East Village, on the night before Halloween.
She had a point, as many of the guests were as unique as the vendors in the new retail collective, but please note that we use the word as affectionately as possible.
Originally, the two-room storefront was going to be just the domain of Alicia Trani’s “Hair Queen” salon, which was previously located on Eldridge Street.
“I came to see the space, and I just fell in love with it, even though it was completely full of 16 years’ worth of garbage,” recalls Trani. “So I went ahead and got the lease. It just really lends itself to two separate businesses happening, and I wanted to downsize my salon anyway and just make it more manageable for myself. So I saw the space, and it reminded me of an East Village apartment — the front space very much seems like a living room and the back space probably was a kitchen at some point. I thought I’d be very happy just sticking two little chairs back there for the salon and having a boutique up front.”
With Corey TuT and JoJo Americo doing double duty working in the salon and watching the shop (as well as contributing their original wares for sale — both have t-shirt lines and Americo makes some pretty fabulous platform shoes), Ali Barone stepped in on the business end, and the place seemed to grow exponentially as soon as they opened the doors.
“We took over the front space on Sept. 1, and on Sept. 2, people were wandering in and buying things,” Trani says. “So this thing is happening so quickly that it’s happening before we can even catch up. We’re still working out all of the kinks and the details.”
The shop is a melange of original art (Steven Hammel, Victoria Eytchison, Katie Miller, Ethan Minsker), vintage clothes and housewares (Maggie Savage, Wendy Schecter), skincare (Alise Marie, The Beauty Witch), punk rock glow in the dark handmade pillows (Edley ODowd), original jewelry (Lisa Brownlee), hand-painted one-of-a-kind streetwear (Maria Tsaguriya), dog clothes (James Suozzi), rhinestone encrusted clothing and headwear (Chelle Bee), photography (Duncan Fitch) and even more than we have room to mention.
Up front is a big comfy couch where you can just plop down and take it all in.
“It’s newly familiar,” muses playwright/director Paul E. Alexander. “It feels like an old East Village store.”
“It’s got that old East Village vibe,” concurs actor/singer/cabaret performer Amber Martin. “It goes to show that new places can bring back the things that we love about New York.”
“I consider this Pat Field without Pat,” Gustafson adds, referencing the classic eponymous shop that was a community institution for decades.
Barone says that she hopes the shop becomes “an East Village fixture by creating a welcoming community hub, promoting and supporting East Village artists and blending salon, store and events space.”
“You know”, adds Trani, “we always have great music, and the clients have become our friends, and we have had a really good vibe for a lot of years now. No drama! You can look in other hair salons and find plenty of it, but we don’t want drama. We want to just get along and support each other. We’re just a cool downtown hair salon with a lot of clients that are artists and musicians and performers. Our prices aren’t crazy, and we keep it really low-key that way.”
Trani notes, “I would love for it to be a space where everybody is welcome and everybody’s safe. Everyone can express their creativity. Like some of the stores that Ali and I used to run around in Soho and the East Village together in the 90’s and places that we just felt were so cool and so welcoming and had such a funky vibe. So, it’s all about the community and the people, you know, being able to fly their freak flags”.
Their work-in-progress website is lefreakboutique.com and the Instagram is @lefreakboutique513. Lefreak says to watch for an announcement about a very special event with Robin Byrd on Nov. 14!
