KENT — Dr. Dimples, giggle therapist, greeted visitors as they arrived at the K.E.N.T. (Keep Eating Nutritious Today) fair at the Davis IGA on Saturday, April 30. Marilyn Gansel, a holistic lifestyle coach and fitness professional, gathered everyone together with the vigor and enthusiasm one might expect from someone who is also a personal trainer.About 20 people joined the walk that kicked off the health and wellness fair that morning. Gansel led a tour of town, pointing out a new restaurant and her studio (Fitness Matters of Kent), and encouraged everyone that the parade passed to come back to the IGA for the fair.Outside the store was a tent set up with health and wellness professionals offering information and services. There was information about the newest food pyramid, free blood pressure and diabetes screening, massage and information about body work.At noon, children participated in a jump rope contest. There was also a raffle for a bike, sponsored by the IGA. Gansel raffled off an hour of personal training time.Inside the store, Marie Roze, one of the owners of Davis IGA, set up tasting stations. IGA employees manned most of the stations, offering some of the store’s health-oriented products. There were also representatives from Boar’s Head and Pirate’s Booty.Roze pointed out new tags on the shelves designed to draw the consumer’s attention to healthier choices.“We’re not a big box store,” she said. “We don’t have just one section. But we keep up with the times as best we can.”Roze said she had the idea for the fair while attending a trade conference. When she got home, she reached out to Gansel to create a fair that would address both diet and fitness.“I’ve always been health conscious, exercise conscious, and I try to eat well,” said Roze, who ran the New York City Marathon in 2000 in memory of her mother, who died of cancer. “I wanted to help Kent get healthy for spring. I’m a runner, and I’m excited about getting out there.”
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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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