BK 50
GIZMO VINTAGE HONEY
Owner, Lulu Vintage Clothing
Jul 13, 2021
If you’ve ever walked up Marcus Garvey Boulevard from Fulton Street, chances are you’ve run into Gizmo Vintage Honey (the only name she will answer to, honey). A bedazzled ball of energy, Honey is the proprietor of Lulu Vintage Clothing, a secondhand shop that mixes old-school stoop sale vibes with savvy and sassy social media smarts. For two years now, Honey has set up her standalone shop along the sidewalk. Two overflowing racks, filled with one-of-a-kind secondhand items, are watched over by her only employee: a yorkie named Poopie Butt.
“We need you’s not views,” a hand-drawn cardboard sign announced on one recent visit. Still, Honey gets views. With 32,000 followers on Instagram (thanks in no small part to shoutouts from New York Nico), Honey frequently models her items online and during the pandemic began hosting auctions on Instagram Live. She’ll hold up items, name a price and let her viewers outbid each other—or haggle her down. As a result, her reach extends well beyond her Bed-Stuy sidewalk: Honey has customers all over the States, in Canada, the U.K., Africa and beyond.
Increasingly she has used her own influence to highlight struggling local businesses on her feed. All because, she says, she is “authentik with a K.”