Punk Rock Stylist and NYC Icon Jimmy Webb Dead at 62
LatestJimmy Webb, a downtown NYC mainstay, punk rock stylist, and manager/buyer for famed East Village boutique Trash & Vaudeville, has died. He was 62.
Blondie’s Debbie Harry, whom Webb considered a muse, confirmed his death to the New York Post on Tuesday. “We are all going to miss our wonderful friend Jimmy Webb,” she told the tabloid. “There goes a lovely unique NYC character. I feel lucky to have known him.”
Harry also paid tribute to him on Twitter:
And he got shout-outs from some other downtown regulars, including Joan Jett and Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach:
For about 40 years, Trash and Vaudeville was THE punk rock boutique on St. Marks Place, which was THE punk rock street in Manhattan. The Ramones shopped there. Blondie shopped there. The Heartbreakers shopped there.
I shopped there as a New York teen seeking spaces for rebellion (and the two St. Marks sushi joints that didn’t card) even though I couldn’t afford the Doc Martens and my most punk-rock attribute was a Max’s Kansas City shirt my mom bought me at Urban Outfitters. I remember Jimmy Webb because he was always there, and I was afraid of him, because he was cool as hell and I was wearing Urban Outfitters. When Trash and Vaudeville left St. Marks in 2016—pushed out in part because of rent, though the shop moved less than a 10-minute walk away—it felt like the death of a block and an era. So does this.