Heartbreakingly Ame Ame - the store that started in the East Village and was known as the "Raingear and Candy" store and the best place in NYC to buy the best umbrellas shut down operations in June 2016. The decision to close Ame Ame came 6 months earlier on December 25th, 2015, (with Global Warming being one of the final nails in the coffin, bringing a Christmas Holiday shopping season so warm I was wearing Saltwater Sandals.) For several months, until June of 2016 I pulled up the gate and opened on occasions, primarily by appointments, while I tried to find business partners and investors to open up an exciting, new coffee shop in the same space or at the very least find somebody to sublease the space. But unfortunately that wasn't able to happen and I had one of those landlords who really could have and should have done a lot more to prevent loss of a really unique and amazing business and community of people (because Ame Ame really was not just a business but a community and cultural lab.). It's only now after two plus years of grief, sadness, heartbreak, the fight the survive and depression that I'm able to start sharing the real story of why all that I (and countless others) truly loved is no more. Thank you everybody who helped along the way and always hoped for the best. May our paths some how positively cross again in the future.