My mother was a talented seamstress so for the earlier part of my childhood most of my clothes were homemade. She loved embroidering tiny flowers and animals on dress pockets, basting collars and hand-sewing French hems. This was the late sixties and early seventies and downtown parents had two choices in clothing for kids: shopping for the cheap polyester items to be found along Fourteenth Street or taking the subway uptown to Macy's, B. Altman's or Bloomingdale’s, to spend a fortune on high quality clothing. A good friend of my father's gave me an impractical article of clothing from B. Altman's every Christmas and I remember the joy of getting to go exchange it for something exquisite and equally impractical. Foremost in my memory was returning a very lacy set of pajamas for an orange go-go dress when I was in second grade. But aside from these occasional jaunts uptown, my mother could not afford to shop for my sister and me in any of these stores on the money my father made as a wood carver, a carpenter and often all around handy man.

Then our next door neighbor - mother of two boys, one of whom went on to form the famed Beastie Boys, but no, we never played together - opened a little shop on West 10th Street called Gee the Kids Need Clothes. Most of the merchandise was second-hand, refurbished with cool patches that said things like "Keep On Truckin'" and "Peace" as well as swatches of calico and velvet. I am sure my first pair of real Levis came from that store, as about the only thing my mother didn't make herself was socks, underwear, and the occasion red polo shirt. I remember the interior was painted a bright yellow, and there was probably a mural or at least stencils of some sort decorating the walls. It had that happy sunny kid-friendly feel, and how I loved going in to try on clothes.

Best of all was the official "Gee the Kids Need Clothes" T-shirt. It pictured an outline of a little boy from the back, in a Paddington style hat. The name of the shop arched around the child - I'm now convinced it was a boy – and the words Greenwich Village sat below his feet. I had two - royal blue with white writing and yellow with orange. My mother still has one put away in a box labeled “Chris's Favorites”. I don't remember how long the shop survived during the tumultuous seventies. It doesn't seem like it was very long. I know the family moved out of their house and there was talk of a divorce. I remember my mother being sad the shop was closing.»