[EVG photo from March]
As we first reported back in March... A Repeat Performance on First Avenue between Ninth Street and 10th Street is closing today after 39 years in business.
Proprietor Sharon Jane Smith has said that it's simply time to move on. Store founder Beverly Bronson died in May 2018.
[Photo of Smith by Daniel Efram]
Document Journal has a piece on Smith's ongoing shop project — chronicling the stories of people who have shopped here through the years.
Currently, Smith is writing a piece titled “Confessions of a Shopkeeper,” eliciting the characters and circumstances that she’s encountered throughout the past 38 years. Hoping to first have it presented as a performed theatre piece, Smith plans on later publishing the script into a book. “Often it’s poignant situations that present themselves in this shop. It’s not all the grand, dramatic stuff of New York life. It’s actually more subtle than that. It’s the little interactions between New Yorkers.” “It’s not fair if I go to my grave knowing all of this and not sharing it,” said Smith.
The shop’s alluringly diverse collection of items is deemed inevitable by Smith. “Anything and anyone can end up in New York really if you think about it,” she said. “All the people who drift in and out of New York. What things they carry with them, what little treasures they hide.”
Jewelry designer Lisa Linhardt, a friend and former neighbor of Smith's, will be moving into the space after A Repeat Performance.
Previously on EV Grieve:
A Repeat Performance, until July 31
A new storefront for A Repeat Performance, and word about the next tenant