When I hit junior high I was introduced to shorts and sneakers for gym. Not just any shorts, mind you. They had to be official Hicksville High shorts in black and orange as sold at Goldman Brothers Store in town. They had a sort of contract to supply official school wear. The girls had a whole jumper thing. Since we did not have lockers in junior high you had to wear your shorts under your regular pants on the days you had gym, usually twice a week. You could either wear or carry your sneakers. Parents bought most of our stuff, but the cool kids seemed to buy their own and came up with things like white sneakers. The cool kids carried their sneakers to school. The rest of us squeaked around the halls all day. For some strange reason, most of my gym classes were first thing in the morning. The coach wore a full-length sweatsuit. We, on the other hand, wore the equivalent of underwear. Coach would tell you to run around to get warm. Then along came ninth grade and a new horror: showers. Now I had not been seen in the buff since I was 4 years old. Suddenly I was to be required to stand with my fellows without a stitch. Talk about trauma.• • •Coach had an interesting way of organizing us for our team games. The first couple of classes I think he just sort of observed us until he had identified the natural leaders, i.e., the bullies. If there weren’t enough of those he could always fill in with anybody who was playing a varsity or junior varsity sport. Having done this he basically turned us loose for the rest of the period. This way, in football the littlest guys got to be blockers. The leaders could sort of pick them up by the back of the shirt and throw them into the opposition. In basketball all of the ball handling on your team was done by two guys who literally ran over the opposing extras. The extras were everybody except the two ball handlers. • • •In baseball the worst players were sent into the outfield because the leaders did not want to have to run all over the place after the ball. When you screwed up they would rant and shake their fist at you, thus building confidence and providing motivation for physical activity as part of a healthy lifestyle.One year we actually had written exams on the rules of the games, but the natural leaders weren’t so good at those so they dropped this pretty quickly. Besides, rules are for sissies. That’s what gym taught me.Bill Abrams resides, and when feeling sentimental puts on those Hicksville High shorts (yes, they still fit!), 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.”
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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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