New Year, Shmoo Year. Whose idea was this anyway? It doesn’t feel like a new year when the snow and ice are still on the ground and everyone (except the skiers, but they are a little bit crazy, whooshing down mountainsides without good brakes) is sitting around with their teeth chattering and a blanket draped over their head in that corner of the kitchen near the oven. It not only doesn’t feel right, it is inconvenient. I am not prepaying for a party that I may not be able to get to or from due to bad weather. I hate having to wear dress shoes and thin pants when the temperature is below freezing. I think we need to rethink the timing on this. Bears got it right.How about we move this to the spring? This feels more like a new beginning, what with flowers and groundhogs poking up out of the ground. I like to pretend that all that bad juju is left behind in the old year. This is easier to do when you are looking at the days getting warmer rather than colder. The spring also has my birthday, which would now be approximate, like many of those from the finer sex.Better still, maybe we could try doing without the stupid calendar. I can get away without a watch, why not no calendar? My dog doesn’t seem to need one and he does fine. He just wakes up each morning and when he discovers he is alive again he gets all wiggly and then runs around and checks to see if everyone else is alive and gets them up if they are. He does not check for appointments. I do that for him and, truth be told, he would probably just as soon I skipped it because nothing good ever happens at his appointments and come to think about it, this is often true for my appointments. If it is really important for me to meet with someone why not just go and see them? If they are there, we can have a meeting. If they are not, oh well. Maybe I can catch a movie while I am in the neighborhood, probably a better use of my time, anyway.Do we really need to know more than what season we are in? The Indians didn’t think so, with the exception of the Maya, if you count them as Indians. Personally, I don’t. Too detail oriented and kind of gloomy Guses with all that end of the world stuff.So the next time you don’t get a date sensitive card from me, don’t take it personally. I will probably send them all at once, but after New-New Year’s. Bill Abrams resides, and counts down ‘til the New Year (in March), in Pine Plains.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
Provided
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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