Members Only: Community 54, a Place Where Art Meets Culture

For legendary NYC streetwear shop Community 54, the name of the game is nostalgia.

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Complex Original

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Around just about every corner in New York City you'll find a wealth of cultural happenings. Walk through Chelsea to gaze at some fantastic art. Take a stroll through Williamsburg and pop into some amazing vintage clothing shops. Nod your head and raise your hands to some high-energy, up-and-coming hip-hop artists in Harlem. Or find it all in a single place, with Community 54, which not only captures, but perfects each of these entities organically.

Originally located just beyond a Lower East Side storefront filled with working old-school arcade games and through a secret passage located under a photo booth in the back, you'd find a room filled with racks lined up and ready to show off the vintage wares that store partners Daymon Green and Jason Jacobs had gone to the ends of the earth to find and stock. With 20-plus years of experience in the industry—consulting for various high-profile brands, managing retail boutiques, and building a network rivaling that of the President of the United States—the partners were able to lay a solid foundation for Community 54 and hit the ground running. Though even before opening, the dice were rolling in their favor. On the eve of opening night, October 30, 2011, their affinity for the New York hip-hop scene led them to a burgeoning young rapper out of Harlem who, earlier that same day, had signed his first record deal after his highly acclaimed debut mixtape, Live.Long.ASAP, had caught everyone’s attention in mere weeks.

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“The Rocky thing almost didn’t happen because he signed the day before the opening,” Green confesses. “His manager is a close friend, so when he signed his deal—you know record labels moving forward are involved in every aspect of his career. So we had to take him off the flyer and it ended up being a SpaceGhostPurrp event and, of course, Rocky and the whole mob rolled through. And that night there were a lot cats who weren’t really known at the point: Flathbush Zombies, Slim Dollars—so many artists in the crowd who ended up being artists that now people know. It’s really all part of the scene down there.”

A$AP Rocky wouldn’t be the last up-and-coming hip-hop artist to stroll through by a long shot, as Community 54 has established itself as “the spot” if your cultural appetite is insatiable. The shop’s name is even born from one of the most creative, cultural cohabitation spaces of any era: Studio 54. And just like Studio 54, it all ties into bringing together the creative community organically to contribute to a greater cause. Anyone and everyone who is someone makes their way through the hallowed halls of Community 54 to cop some rare Tommy Hilfiger or a Starter jacket, listen to the best hip-hop that you’ve probably haven’t heard yet, or witness the “Yard” in all of it’s graffitied glory.

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A spacious courtyard in the back of the store doubles as an event space for the staff’s favorite local hip-hop artists to come through and tear the proverbial roof off, and as one of the city’s most unique “art gallery” spaces with an ever-changing landscape—check in daily in order to see what big-name graffiti artists have decided to slide through to bless the Community 54 fam with a prestigious tag.

Friends of Daymon and Jason like artists Claw Money, VFR, DAKS, Esko, and too many others to name have left their mark on the Yard’s wall, tagging it from edge to edge with their prestigious street art that people document in movies and books worldwide. As a sign of respect, Community 54 gets it without lifting a finger.

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“We don’t manage any of the yard. The artists kind of work together,” Green says. “There’s a lot of cats that don’t get along normally, but it’s neutral ground for a lot of cats. So if someone feels inspired and says, ‘Yo, I want to paint something in the back.’ Cool.”

A lot of the artwork can be attributed to the overall love and energy of the space and what it stands for in the neighborhood and in the community. But the main focus of the store will always fall on the immaculately selected vintage streetwear on consignment that they hang their Starter hat on. Serving as the cultural connection between the world of art and music, Community 54 strives to perfect.

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With the recent move to Alphabet City back in January 2014, they no longer have the arcade storefront and secret entrance (though they do still have a few machines strung along the shop), but it has allowed them to allot more wall space to the gear that they are spending days, weeks, and even months scouring to procure. The hard-to-find Jordans that you didn’t get back in 2001 because you were seven years old or the vintage Supreme x Vans that you didn’t know existed sit out in the open, waiting for you to grab them and give them a test-drive. There are hats on the walls or in cubbies repping everything about NYC and the culture it’s created. No matter what, everything always ties to some specific era or moment in hip-hop. Each piece has a story the staff could tell you that breaks down its importance to the hip-hop culture. Their collection focuses on the strength of memory and nostalgia. In that same vein, they have to be real with themselves and come to terms with the fact that not everything that was cool back then is going to resonate with the same people buying their gear today.

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“Creative nostalgia is what we’re inspired by,” Green says. “The early ’90s—we take a lot of influence from that, but we’re not stuck in the past. Let’s be real: A 16-year-old kid doesn’t care about what was cool back in the day. At the end of the day, you have to be somewhat strategic.”

This frame of thinking is probably why most of the items that they’re selling don’t make it online, because the crew doesn’t even have time to take pictures before customers come in on the regular and scoop it up the same day it hits the rack.

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Their eponymous in-house line draws on some of these same virtues, reflecting on what was once cool and what will undoubtedly see its heyday again because of the cyclical nature of fashion, and, to a degree, streetwear in particular. There isn’t a huge design element to their pieces, rather representing parts of the past—times that most can look back on in a positive light—and directly linking it to today’s culture is what it’s about.

“We’re not saying we’re creating the wheel,” Green says. “A lot of our ideas come from other ideas, but we add our own twist to it. We know what we want to draw inspiration from and it has even more of a meaning to it. That separates us from a lot of the brands that look the same.”

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Even the relationships of the in-store associates have created a different type of retail environment. Most of their employees have very little retail background, but they are well-known within certain hip-hop circles and are trusted confidants of the code in which the culture lives and dies by. Rich Hil, rapper and son of Tommy Hilfiger, was a former sales associate at Community 54, representing the store through the eyes of New York City’s youth. He wasn’t sought out by the staff to join the ranks. He found them and an organic relationship grew from there—same with A$AP Rocky, Chris Brown, Vinny Cha$e, Taz Arnold, VFR, and Snoeman. They’re all people who represent the culture in some form or fashion and seek out Community 54 as their cultural hub.

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“It seems strategic,” Green says. “And even our lawyer we met with recently, who’s helping us with development, looking at pieces of the puzzle, it could be very strategic. But to be quite honest, this has all happened and I’d love to say there was an elaborate master plan. But at the end of the day, that wasn’t the case.”

And based on where they’ve already been, and where they are inevitably headed, one certainly wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

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