Five floors of shopping, eating, boozing, branding, outdoor lounging, thread-counting, and urban renewing! Williamsburg's newest retail space is a four-story Urban Outfitters complex on North 6th Street called Space Ninety 8, and it is now open to consumers.
Everyone has very strong opinions on Urban Outfitters, mostly negative. This has never mattered. A friend attending the press preview last night compared Space Ninety 8 to Duane Reade. People like to complain about it, but those people still shop there. She's right, and that's probably okay. Everyone there was in on the joke. All out of time, playing dress-up in a museum to an age that already feels dated without truly coming to pass.
18 of Urban Outfitters' 230 worldwide locations are in New York. In their latest SEC filing, the Philadelphia-based clothing conglomerate (URBN) has seen a little bit of investor faith return after releasing their current quarter's sales numbers. In the report, they also describe their retail segment, which is you. Who are you?
"Young adults aged 18 to 28 [attracted by] its unique merchandise mix and compelling store environment..."
Space Ninety 8 is a compelling store environment in the sense that, from the moment you walk in until the moment you exit, you are in an entirely disorienting yet self-sustaining realm. It's a thriving ecosystem replete with food, "culture," and libations.
The decor is Nautical Southwestern, a nonsensical mashup that fills all empty corners with dock posts, twine, cacti, and bones.
The internal architecture is violently asymmetrical, filled with incongruous shapes and angles, arranged to delight and confuse you. One can stand on the top floor, look down to the ground floor, and still have no sense of where one is situated in relation to the rest of the store or the outside world. Things to buy become your only spatial referents. Windows are scarce, and the lights make it easy to forget about the world.
Fluorescent lighting is a scourge—as mammals, much of our physiological routines (not to mention psychological well-being) rely on the predictable, celestial flow of day-into-night. Except in the absence of natural rhythms, the unnatural moves in.
At last night's press preview the store was indeed filled with young adults, 18 to 28. But also, Normcore men, 45-58?
Who's normcore now? (Marc Yearsley / Gothamist)
"...We have established a reputation with these young adults, who are culturally sophisticated, self-expressive and concerned with acceptance by their peer group..."
Urban Outfitters is a lifestyle, a personality, and like any good lifestyle, it is curated. A type of hyper-curation—an obsessive, algorithmic, commodity graveyard—that at its most pure is at its most confounding. The odd selection of records on display, for example: a hip-hop slate featuring Drake's Take Care, Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die, and Dr. Dre's The Chronic.
Conventional wisdom would note that Dr. Dre's 2001 is a much better and more fun album, but always staying one step ahead often requires taking five steps back and to the side. Perhaps some rap fans would protest, but generally, hoarding encyclopedic knowledge only to wield it pedantically like a zweihänder against one's rivals reduces art and history to nothing more than a black arrowhead and bullet casing necklace—an ugly, meaningless vessel created only to be possessed, devoured, and evacuated. These notions code objects as having no inherent value or quality outside how and where those objects fit into a complex system of larger cultural signifiers, all available without prerequisites for the right price. Taste for taste's sake.
Brass knuckles made of wood, $58 (Marc Yearsley / Gothamist)
"...Our stores accommodate our customers’ propensity not only to shop, but also to congregate with their peers..."
The large roof is equipped with picnic tables and little tents. It is very pleasant up there, and we saw a couple make out quite aggressively for a length of time. The man looked like Gunner Stahl with a better haircut. Everything is for sale. Beautiful people dressed well fanned out into the night.
Really, though, it was never about Urban Outfitters. It was never about the liquor license or "reasonably priced" clothes or bad music or annoying books or a good selection of jeans or the surfboards or the loss of someplace cool. It is about you. Choose your friends wisely. Mind and respect the relative autonomy of social life in its waning years, and congregate outside primary sites of business.
A portion of the first floor near the entrance is dedicated to goods made by local artisans. It is a small section. There are sturdy, locally-made hatchets available for purchase. It seemed fitting, utilitarian. Spend your money wisely, as it might be all you have left.
Hatchets (Marc Yearsley / Gothamist)
