America's first punk rock shop began as an extension of Tish and Snooky Bellomo's closet. "Everybody was always copying our style," Snooky recalled, "so we wondered if we could sell it." The result was Manic Panic, which was a fixture at 33 St. Mark's Place from its June 1977 opening until it closed early in 1989.

"You wouldn't believe this neighborhood back then," said Tish. "the East Village had bottomed out, and most of the storefronts on St. Marks place were empty. We took this place for $250 a month, which seemed like a lot."

Snooky admitted that they knew little about operating a business when they opened the shop. "We started with a few go-go boots and two racks of clothes brought from home in the Bronx. But people were afraid to come into this neighborhood at first. Some days we'd make fifty cents when somebody bought a button from us. But then we started getting good press and things began to change."

Expanding beyond the basic stock of motorcycle jackets and Doc Martin boots, Manic Panic stocked such glitter-punk accessories as turquoise hair dye, metallic gold corsets, wigs, glitter eyeliner, stage blood, liquid latex, and spike-heeled shoes. "You couldn't order spike heels back then," Tish said. "You had to find them. We'd go into old stores and ask if they had any old stock, and they'd say 'Yes, but nothing you girls would want, just old spike heels." And they wouldn't believe it when we'd buy them out, maybe a hundred pairs in their original boxes. We'd bring them back here and display them on the walls, put them in the windows, just the greatest stuff. Like that place down on Reade Street, remember, Snooky? That place Debbie Harry found?"

Debbie Harry was more than an early celebrity customer-- Tish and Snooky were backup singers with the punk group Blondie in its early dates at CBGB. "Before they got signed," Tish added, with no trace of regret.

"So we got together a group called the Drop-Outs," said Snooky, "and then in 1977 our friend Russell Wolinsky came by the shop and put us in this new band he was starting for one show at CBGB's. He called the group the Sic F*cks, spelled with an asterisk because 'All we need is U!' Anyway, we packed the place 'cause everybody wanted to see what kind of crazy band would call itself the Sic F*cks. Then Lester bangs gave us this terrific write-up, so we kept doing it, made a record, and still do one concert a year."

News of the shop began to circulate, and Manic Panic attracted a healthy mix of local customers and celebrities. "The Ramones and the Dictators shopped here a lot," Tish began, referring to the CBGB favorites.

"But when we first opened, so did Caroline Kennedy," Snooky added. "And Bill Murray, he's shopped here for years. Cher bought a Sic F*cks nightshirt from me, but she'd never heard of the group. 'I just like the shirt,' she said in that voice of hers."

"Bruce Springsteen bought shoes here," Tish recalled, "and Sid Vicious bought one of our torn T-shirts. Cyndi Lauper used to shop here too, before she made it, and is still a faithful customer. She is someone who deserved to make it; she's a good soul. But we're not doing as much of our original design work anymore. Uptown designers used to send scouts down here to see what we were doing. Then they'd knock the design off and make a fortune at it. We got tired of that, so we stopped. Let them  think for a change."

Of course, East Village fashions change, and the dyed spiked hair of the early 1980s has given way to tight pants and straggly hair that recall the hippies of the 1960s. But even this may not be the latest East Village look. "You wanna look like you belong here?" Tish snapped "dress like a Yuppie. They've taken over here, behaving like we're the outsiders. They have as much to do with the East Village as the Gap." she said, referring to the clothing chain, which had recently opened a conventional-clothing store around the corner on Second Avenue. "Well, a Steve's Ice Cream store failed because nobody from the neighborhood would shop there. Maybe these people will get the same treatment."

Through the 1980s, the success of Manic Panic inspired numerous imitators along St. Mark's Place, though Snooky Bellomo thought the serious attitude such imitators had about business kept them from becoming direct competition. But rents along the street have risen sharply, and by 1988 the storefront they took for $250 was up to $3,000 a month. "We're not into homesteading again," Tish mused, "so we're thinking of closing and just doing wholesale."