By Mike Ellis (via Lansing City Pulse)
You’d expect to find a tie-dye shop in Old Town, REO Town or East Lansing.
But downtown Lansing?
Laura Castle has been running the downtown shop Capital Hippie for almost four years, plus six months beforehand at the also-downtown Middle Village Market.
“I must just love to struggle,” she said, “because I would make more money in REO Town, I’d make way more money in Old Town, and forget about East Lansing. It could even be like a winter business, open two days a week.”
But downtown is changing.
The city’s first skyscraper in nearly a century could open as soon as 2027, with hundreds of apartments. There’s also a new City Hall and plans to turn the current City Hall into a hotel, along with new housing and the Ovation music venue.
Lots of potential customers.
Castle reopened her shop on Saturday (Jan. 24). She was closed all of January, except for one day.
A small business owner, she said she normally takes off three weeks in January to recharge.
“Well, I guess it was two weeks last year and only a week the year before that, so next year, it may be a month,” she said, laughing.
The Peanut Shop and Weston’s Kewpee Sandwich Shoppe, some of Capital Hippie’s neighbors, have been in business on Washington Square for a combined total of 180 years, give or take.
But after fewer than a handful of years downtown, newcomer Capital Hippie has already become a colorful and hard-to-ignore institution.
Photo Credit: Raymond Holt/Lansing City Pulse
