Crops for Girls closes on 9th Street

[EVG photo from yesterday]

An EVG reader writes in to say that Crops for Girls, the longtime hair salon at 437 E. Ninth St. between Avenue A and First Avenue, has closed now. (There has been a for rent sign in the front window of late.)

In a Yelp post from last month, one longtime customer wrote about owner-stylist Michael D’Amico: "Sad to see him leave the biz because there is no one else who can cut consistently like he does."

Here's more on D’Amico from a New York Times piece in 2014:

Since 1992, Michael D’Amico has made a business out of chopping off women’s hair, dealing exclusively in above-the-shoulder styles. Bobs, pageboys, asymmetrical razor cuts — they are his specialty. If the salon had a motto, it might be “No men, no ponytails, no exceptions.”

Mr. D’Amico, 50, was a beauty school student in Manhattan in the 1980s. Women on the streets — this was the heyday of new wave and punk — didn’t look like the girls back in Jersey City, where he grew up. “I would see girls walking around with buzz cuts and other cropped, funky hair,” he recalled. Hoping to avoid a career giving ho-hum trims, he decided to narrow his focus. “There are only so many styles you can do with long hair, and I like the challenge of working with people who are making a big change,” he said.

There isn't any mention of a reason for the closure on the salon's website or Facebook page.

Dorian Grey, the other retail tenant at No. 437, closed in June 2016. The gallery owners were apparently unable to secure a new lease with the landlord, Benchmark Real Estate Group, who bought the building for $6 million in the spring of 2016.