The Hole-in-the-Wall Shop That Dressed Hip-Hop

NEW YORK -- The store was a legend in certain fashion circles, those circles being die-hard sneaker heads and connoisseurs of discount streetwear.

"It was like a gold mine," said Bobbito García, a DJ and author of "Where'd You Get Those? New York City's Sneaker Culture: 1960-1987." Set on a forbidding block in the South Bronx, the shop was not a place for the Sunday shopper, García said.

"It wasn't like they had any ads, no internet," he said. "So the only way you could access it is by virtue of knowing somebody. And we didn't just give out that information back then."

The shop, H&R Hosiery, on East 163rd Street, with no identifying sign, was where Bronx rappers Fat Joe and Slick Rick cultivated their looks and the Cold Crush Brothers learned to be fresh, wild, fly and bold.

Slick Rick even called his first group the Kangol Crew, for hats they bought at the store.

On Thursday afternoon, the store's owner, Charles Goldman, sat among heaps of retro streetwear for one last time before the store closed after 60 years, unable to make the $8,000 monthly rent. Around him were former employees and old regulars, Black and Latino, passing bottles of vodka and tequila in paper bags and savoring Goldman's colorfully profane banter -- an ad hoc shiva for an old school institution. He was Chuckie to them, as he'd been since he took over the store from his parents, Harry and Renee, in 1977.

Familiar story, Goldman said: death by Amazon. No one wanted to dig for a bargain on a sharkskin jacket when they could find anything online for a click. "The hunt is gone," Goldman said. But here, surrounded by forlorn "Beat Street"-era leather jackets and AJ Lester jeans, the loss still hurt.

No one called it by its official name; everyone knew it as Jewman -- a name that can hit the ear hard. Goldman, 69, said he never thought anything of the name. It was a throwback to an earlier era, when the Bronx was filled with mom and pop merchants, many of them Jewish, who knew their customers and freely negotiated with them. "Back then it was a different area," Goldman said, noting that his parents used to speak Yiddish in the store. "It wasn't anything racial. Not here, anyway."

Gerard Tuitt, who worked at the store from 1979 to 1987, and came back for its closing, said the name was not considered pejorative.

For hip-hop's first generation, teenagers from the Bronx, the store's first draw was its low prices, said Easy A.D., a member of the Cold Crush Brothers who now works for a school nutrition literacy program called Hip Hop H.E.A.L.S. "He was instrumental in, No. 1, us saving money. No. 2, he sold the things that we actually wore -- sheepskin gloves, sheepskin hats, V-neck sweaters."

Troy Washington, 53, seated beside Goldman, said he started shopping at the store as a teenager. "I got my first lumberjack here, with the hat to match," he said, grabbing a plastic bag full of red-and-black-checked jackets. "Like Biggie Smalls wore."

What else did Washington get there?

"Everything," he said.

In the '80s, the store stood out because much of the neighborhood was burned out or vacant, said Chucho Vega, who started hanging out there when he was 7 or 8 years old.

"All this area was abandoned," he said. "There was no buildings out here."

By the mid-80s, as the store's reputation grew and New York hip-hop exploded, seekers came from outside the neighborhood, alternating trips to the Bronx shop or the Lower East Side.

"People used to wait in line to get in here," Tuitt said.

Bonz Malone, a writer and hip-hop style icon, remembered hearing about the store from some older guys. "The word on the street was about the Jewman, and I didn't even know how to take that," he said. "Was this, like, a racial slur? I was afraid to even repeat it, but I kept hearing it."

When he finally got to the store, he was awed. "You had clothing just hanging from every possible space," he said. "Incredible. I'm looking around, afraid to even say anything. As soon as I walked in, I didn't know what I wanted anymore, I just was looking at everything that he had. It just expanded everything. It was clear I didn't know anything about style." What he got: British Walkers, serious foot swagger.

At the store, a customer named Gregory Lopez came in with a purchase he'd made two days before. He wanted to memorialize the occasion.

He asked another customer to shoot a video of him with Goldman. The jacket was from the 1980s, or looked it. "I used to be an Electric Boogie guy," Lopez said, a look that included Adidas or Timberlands, also from the store. Goldman sold him the jacket for $60, a "Bob Barker price," Lopez said, on an item he said would otherwise cost $250 or $300.

As the afternoon wore on, Goldman made a few last sales, bargaining to the end.

"Give me the money and get out of here," he told a customer amiably, adding an expletive to both halves of the sentence.

It was classic Chuckie, Vega said. "If you had money, nobody walked out that door without buying something," he said.

Vega smiled, and everybody drank.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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