SALISBURY — The Norfolk Curling Club will host a curling demonstration at the Salisbury Winter Sports Association’s (SWSA) Alpine Ski Jumping Winter Carnival (which is from Jan. 25 to 27).The curling club is currently rebuilding its facility, which was destroyed a year ago in an arson fire. Mary Fanette, the club’s president, said the club will create a 100-foot demonstration curling sheet, “weather permitting —as long as it’s cold enough for us to freeze the water.”Fanette said regulation curling sheets are 146 feet long. Players start at one end and push a “stone” toward the “house” (a circle in the ice) at the other end. One player pushes the stone, while two others sweep the ice in front of the stone to help get it to the house.The club members will build a frame at Satre Hill in Salisbury (site of the jumps) and, if the weather is below freezing, they will fill it with water. The demonstrations will take place all day Saturday.The demonstration sheet will be in the field to the left of the food shack.Visitors will have the opportunity to try their hand at curling.The two young men arrested for setting the fire the club were sentenced in December to 10 years in jail. The fire completely destroyed the club and all its equipment, including historic and irreplaceable items.Fanette said the club needs to raise $1.5 million above what they received in insurance proceeds to properly rebuild. “So far we are about three-quarters of the way to our goal.” Donations and fundraisers have generated the needed funds.“We have begun rebuilding and are on track to be operating by the fall of this year.”Club members have been invited to use other curling clubs in the northeast in the meantime.For information on curling, to join the Norfolk curling club or to make a donation, go to www.norfolkcurlingclub.org. And of course come to the Alpine weekend, if temperatures go below freezing, for a closeup look at the sport.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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