If you were a sharpdressed New York punk rocker in the 1990s and, I suppose, the 2000s, 99x was where you spent every style-devoted dollar you had. Trash & Vaudeville, another place I never actually shopped, was kind of juvenile — baby’s first stop for bondage pants and creepers and hair dye and all the other overpriced accoutrements of punks fresh out of basic training. But if you liked straight clean lines — Ben Sherman polos, Fred Perry jackets, Sta-Prest pants and twill jeans, basic and muted colors and or a fresh and dignified blast of plaid — you graduated to 99x. The girls who worked there were hotter and had better tattoos. The shoes and the boots were just crisp: sharp leather or plastic for the vegans.

I never actually spent any money there. It was too expensive and my style as a teenager was just not on that level. By college I would browse but felt too self-conscious to buy stuff, as if 99x was too good for the likes of me to wear it. Still, every time you saw a punk rocker throw some classic mod into his style, 99x was part of his (northern) soul. If Ted Leo was a boutique, he would be 99x. RIP.

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