Vintage Store To Close After 40 Years In The East Village

EAST VILLAGE, NY — A longtime eclectic vintage shop in the East Village will close by the month's end to make way for a metalsmithing jewelry shop that used to be on the block.

A Repeat Performance has been in the East Village on First Avenue and East 10th Street for nearly four decades after London-native and theatre artist Beverly Bronson, who died last May, first opened the shop in the early 1980s. By 1987, its current owner Sharon Jane Smith, who also worked in theatre, joined her.

Smith plans to close the shop, telling Patch that without Bronson, it is hardly the same.

"It doesn't have the same kind of spark, obviously, without Bev around," Smith said. "This shop was her baby really and I came along and helped her run it."

After years of collecting items to sell at the store, the duo became like one. Customers would often mistake Smith and Bronson for one another, according to Smith.

Unlike other longtime small business owners who say rents are driving them out, Smith is ready to move on and even write a book about her experience.

Her working title is "Confessions of a Shopkeeper" (and she's looking for a publisher).

"It's been a great run," Smith said. By the end of cleaning out the shop — with layers of items she and Bronson collected over the years, she jokes, "I'll be a specialist in cleaning out small spaces."

But there's a silver-lining in the storefront switch: metalsmithing jewelry designer Lisa Linhardt will re-open her jewelry and home goods shop after leaving the East Village avenue seven years ago.

Linhardt first opened her shop in 2008 in the East Village right next door to A Repeat Performance and has long wanted to return to the neighborhood. She is currently located at an upper-floor studio location in Midtown after her Nolita digs closed early last year.

A few months back, Linhardt got a call from the landlords at the vintage shop, 156A First Ave., and they offered her a space.

"They are unusual Manhattan landlords in that they have a strong commitment to [keeping] small businesses alive, and also think it is important to keep artistry and craft in the neighborhood," Linhardt told Patch. The owners "have become family, and when they offered me the storefront, [they] said it was their goal to 'keep it in the family.' How could I possibly refuse?"

She previously had a storefront next door to A Repeat Performance, which is under the same building owners.

"It will be bittersweet to come back to the neighborhood and not have [Bronson and Smith] as neighbors anymore," Linhardt said. She's "very much looking forward to coming back to the East Village — which feels like home."

She expects to open her store, dubbed Linhardt, in early September.