Though I was never a real fan, the shop was kind of the gateway to Lafayette for years. When I first noticed its manifestation was when I used to visit a gallery a little further down the street run by Josh Baer as a kind of 'not EV but definitely not Soho' statement. Baer, whose mother was a famous minimalist painter and expat who relocated to Amsterdam years before, was plugged in to a high tier of art collectors. He showed Jack Goldstein, Nancy Dwyer, et. al. Baer's girlfriend, Rosetta Brooks, was a highly popular reviewer back then for all the trade mags, and once famously installed a regulation hospital bed in the gallery when Baer had a back injury. For months he resided in the gallery office in the hospital bed conducting business. These bohemian twists ended after a very short heyday as I remember, finally, one night leaving an opening totally appalled that the superrich had discovered the gallery. Everyone in the place had on at least $2,000.00 worth of couture. When I got back down to the street I thought, "Well at least there is the Pop Shop."
The shop really stood for the person, that was unmistakeable and quite novel. It was an idea way ahead of today's 'branding' fad. It took the whole 80's art market inferno that drove so much really thinly accomplished art to the land of fat price tags one step further. It was just blatantly saying the whole thing was about retail sales. In that way it was honest and unapologetic about it. And it was a really festive, fun place.