The store was a legend in certain fashion circles, those circles being die-hard sneaker heads and connoisseurs of discount streetwear.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like a gold mine,\u201d said Bobbito<\/a> Garc\u00eda, a D.J. and author of \u201cWhere\u2019d You Get Those? New York City\u2019s Sneaker Culture: 1960-1987.\u201d Set on a forbidding block in the South Bronx, the shop was not a place for the Sunday shopper, Mr. Garc\u00eda said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like they had any ads, no internet,\u201d he said. \u201cSo the only way you could access it is by virtue of knowing somebody. And we didn\u2019t just give out that information back then.\u201d<\/p>\n The shop, H&R Hosiery, on East 163rd Street, with no identifying sign, was where the Bronx rappers Fat Joe and Slick Rick cultivated their looks and the Cold Crush Brothers learned to be fresh, wild, fly and bold<\/a>.<\/p>\n Slick Rick even called his first group the Kangol Crew, for hats they bought at the store.<\/p>\n On Thursday afternoon, the store\u2019s 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 Mr. Goldman\u2019s colorfully profane banter \u2014 an ad hoc shiva for an old school institution. He was Chuckie to them, as he\u2019d been since he took over the store from his parents, Harry and Renee, in 1977.<\/p>\n Familiar story, Mr. 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. \u201cThe hunt is gone,\u201d Mr. Goldman said. But here, surrounded by forlorn \u201cBeat Street\u201d-era leather jackets and AJ Lester jeans, the loss still hurt.<\/p>\n No one called it by its official name; everyone knew it as Jewman \u2014 a name that can hit the ear hard. Mr. 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. \u201cBack then it was a different area,\u201d Mr. Goldman said, noting that his parents used to speak Yiddish in the store. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t anything racial. Not here, anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n Gerard Tuitt, who worked at the store from 1979 to 1987, and came back for its closing, said the name was not considered pejorative. <\/p>\n For hip-hop\u2019s first generation, teenagers from the Bronx, the store\u2019s 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.<\/a> \u201cHe was instrumental in, No. 1, us saving money. No. 2, he sold the things that we actually wore \u2014 sheepskin gloves, sheepskin hats, V-neck sweaters.\u201d<\/p>\n Troy Washington, 53, seated beside Mr. Goldman, said he started shopping at the store as a teenager. \u201cI got my first lumberjack here, with the hat to match,\u201d he said, grabbing a plastic bag full of red-and-black-checked jackets. \u201cLike Biggie Smalls wore.\u201d<\/p>\n What else did Mr. Washington get there?<\/p>\n \u201cEverything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In the \u201980s, 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.<\/p>\n \u201cAll this area was abandoned,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was no buildings out here.\u201d<\/p>\n By the mid-80s, as the store\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople used to wait in line to get in here,\u201d Mr. Tuitt said.<\/p>\n Bonz Malone, a writer and hip-hop style icon, remembered hearing about the store from some older guys. \u201cThe word on the street was about the Jewman, and I didn\u2019t even know how to take that,\u201d he said. \u201cWas this, like, a racial slur? I was afraid to even repeat it, but I kept hearing it.\u201d<\/p>\n When he finally got to the store, he was awed. \u201cYou had clothing just hanging from every possible space,\u201d he said. \u201cIncredible. I\u2019m looking around, afraid to even say anything. As soon as I walked in, I didn\u2019t know what I wanted anymore, I just was looking at everything that he had. It just expanded everything. It was clear I didn\u2019t know anything about style.\u201d What he got: British Walkers<\/a>, serious foot swagger.<\/p>\n At the store, a customer named Gregory Lopez came in with a purchase he\u2019d made two days before. He wanted to memorialize the occasion.<\/p>\n He asked another customer to shoot a video of him with Mr. Goldman. The jacket was from the 1980s, or looked it. \u201cI used to be an Electric Boogie guy,\u201d Mr. Lopez said, a look that included Adidas or Timberlands, also from the store. Mr. Goldman sold him the jacket for $60, a \u201cBob Barker price,\u201d Mr. Lopez said, on an item he said would otherwise cost $250 or $300.<\/p>\n As the afternoon wore on, Mr. Goldman made a few last sales, bargaining to the end.<\/p>\n \u201cGive me the money and get out of here,\u201d he told a customer amiably, adding an expletive to both halves of the sentence.<\/p>\n It was classic Chuckie, Mr. Vega said. \u201cIf you had money, nobody walked out that door without buying something,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mr. Vega smiled, and everybody drank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The store was a legend in certain fashion circles, those circles being die-hard sneaker heads and connoisseurs of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,83817,9,24,86410,56,63,6161,24632,24631,31321,80371,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-221294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-discount-selling","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nineteen-hundred-eighties","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-rap-and-hip-hop","tag-real-estate-commercial","tag-shopping-and-retail","tag-sneakers","tag-south-bronx-bronx","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}