New Block, Old Tricks: Jimmy Webb’s Second Act
By Zoe Rosenblum and Sunny Sun
Spikes, black leather vests, skull-shaped handbags. Sequined tuxedo jackets and plant hangers fashioned from bondage straps. Vintage T-shirts of punk goddess Blondie.
Welcome to I Need More, a rock-and-roll themed clothing store at 75A Orchard Street. The merchandise lining the fuschia walls caters to the hipster ethos of the Lower East Side; in fact, there are two similar stores directly across the street, and one around the corner. But what sets this establishment apart is the owner: the iconic Jimmy Webb.
He looks like the sort of person who would buy the inventory: Mick Jagger- thin, hair bleached blonde and arms adorned with a barbed wire tattoo and clinking metal bracelet. Webb went local when he managed another punk store called Trash and Vaudeville on St. Mark’s Place, the legendary hangout of punks and poets.
Nearly everyone in that East Village neighborhood knew Webb; the stylists of singers Prince and Lady Gaga asked his wardrobe advice. In October, he moved his business 11 blocks downtown for a fresh start.
“It’s a place to find what color in the crayon box you are,” Webb said of his store, “and I’m not talking the box of eight crayons. I’m talking the big ass box of 64, so you can go out and color the world the way you’re supposed to.”
Pamela Minickene, 19, who works at I Need More, describes the shop as, “the most magical place in town.” She said customers range from “actual rock star musicians” like Slash and Iggy Pop to “just random people walking by.”
Regular shopper Matthew Blanks, 26, works at the cafe down the street. On this particular day, Blanks was dressed in knee-high oatmeal-colored socks under his Birkenstock sandals. The barista was shopping for a gift for his lady. His personal style was more relaxed grandpa than leather bondage, but, he said, “My girlfriend likes really niche things, it’ll be like a really dumb horror movie reference or a song reference.” In the end, he chose a pair of fishnets.
Webb is just as eccentric as some of his inventory. “The essence of my store was built on what my apartment looks like,” he chuckled.
Slightly out of breath due to a lung infection, he began to describe his journey through life.. Webb ran away from home in upstate New York at age 16 with “literally zero money.” He settled into the punk scene of the 1970s East Village, becoming one of its most recognizable denizens.
Wearing ripped jeans he “dug out of the trash,” one night Webb caught the eye of someone at the celebrity-studded nightclub. The bouncers waved Webb in and his life “changed forever.” Wiping away a stray tear, Webb described “this long, long hallway that was so gorgeous that when I walked down I felt like a million bucks.” He began to party at the club, where he shared the dance floor with Cher and Andy Warhol.
Webb partied hard and became addicted to heroin, which plagued him for 20 years, to the point where he ended up living in a cardboard box in Tompkins Square Park. “Drugs suck,” he said. After finally getting clean, Webb applied for a job at his old haunt, Trash and Vaudeville. He was the manager, buyer, and face of the store for more than two decades, until he departed in 2015. (Webb would not share why he left.)
Webb has a back tattoo that reads, “I Need More,” a song by Iggy Pop, an old pal. To Webb, the phrase means, “It’s anything beautiful that the world needs more of.”
Webb sees his purpose as honoring his “spiritual mentors,” a group that includes Iggy Pop and a young woman that he met through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. “I get to be here. I get to dance for them, and I get to paint pink walls for them, and I get to bring their spirits into everything I do.”
That everything includes running this new store. When asked about what his store symbolizes he replied, “New York City, past, present, and always believing in the future.”
Photos by Sunny Sun
