(Photo credit: Jeremy Liebman)
If you’re determined to carry your iPod in a case that no one else has, Scott Cronick might have the answer. At his new East Village store, Cronick Valentine (324 E. 9th St., nr. First Ave.; 212-228-7767), which opens February 25, he’ll take customers’ old T-shirts and turn them into an iPod holder, handbag, or cuff ($50–$150; two-week-minimum turnaround). Cronick also sells vintage tees—they were such a hot item on his Website in fall 2004 that it inspired him to open the store—Plexiglas sculptures, Jesus Is Watching watches ($90), beer cozies, airbrushed tees ($25–$35), luggage, and ties.
Last month, John Bermingham (the former manager of downtown home store Pierre Deux Antiques) and his wife, Karine, opened a quaint furniture shop dedicated mainly to European antiques. Bermingham & Co. (243 E. 60th St., nr. Third Ave; 212-223-6546) is for serious collectors and decorators: A late-seventeenth-century terra-cotta lion statue runs about $16,500, while a forties French mirror with a gilded frame and mercury-glass plate is a mere $1,950.
And nestled between Upper West Side brownstones is the newly opened Le Spa Naturale (269 W. 72nd St., at West End Ave., Ste. 1B; 212-580-3333). Inside the tiny space (it has only three treatment rooms), choices go from regular massages to the Detoxifying Foot Spa—a foot bath with an ionizing machine that drains toxins from your feet, supposedly turning the water black from impurities ($100).