A Store with a Mind of Its Own

Shisi Huang hates having to define her business. She prefers vague terms that require further explanation. “Bungee Space is a mixed-concept store, with a focus on image study and criticism,” she said, while stamping her logo—a grinning monster giving birth—onto coffee sleeves. Crammed into the small shop at 13 Stanton Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side are carefully displayed photography books, designer clothes on laundromat racks, a table of Chinese underground publications, jewelry and merchandise, and a coffee bar. A pixelated horse stares from a bright green knit vest.

Huang, 34, wears a bob with short bangs, black-rimmed glasses, and dresses with mismatched buttons and circles of wrinkles, a nod to her artistic identity. One Bungee Space customer said that Huang wore the best clothing she’d seen in a long while. Huang responds to such compliments by naming the designers, whose garments she sells in the shop.

“Many artists look down upon fashion,” Huang said, explaining why art books and designer clothes rarely coexist in the same store. “But we were like, why not? We don’t want to limit ourselves.”

Before settling in her current location near SoHo, Huang grew up in China, studied journalism in college and quickly became disillusioned with censorship. She studied photography in London, worked as an editor in Beijing, decided to become an artist, attended the San Francisco Art Institute, cofounded 3standardstoppage, a studio near the school and a proto-Bungee Space, then moved to New York in 2019.

“My first two years in New York were quite traumatic,” she said, handing a customer coffee and encouraging him to look around. She speaks more freely in Mandarin, but made her “trauma” clear in English. She knew no one in the city. Her two business partners had returned to China. “I stayed because I just got an O-1 Visa, and I thought not using it would be a waste,” Huang said.

Huang’s two partners now run a similar store in Beijing, Post Post. One of them, Nanxi Zhou, 32, described the two spaces across the Pacific as “teleporting doors.” Huang and Zhou message daily, drawing inspiration, introducing new designers, and sharing retailing anecdotes. “Shisi singlehandedly created the store and survived in New York, all by herself,” said Zhou, sounding amazed. “She’s fucking great.”

At first, Huang opened a tiny store in the East Village. Months later, COVID hit. Though she was a small business owner, she received no help from the city, which required a three-year history. “I had COVID three times in a row, and I had to move to a new apartment,” she recalled. Paying rent every month and having her store open and close due to quarantine, she fell into despair. “The ceiling kept leaking water, and at one point, completely fell—thank god, because I could end the lease early,” she said. She was ready to head back to Beijing.

But New York was not ready to let her go. In a last try, Huang curated a pop-up exhibit in October 2021, featuring ten experimental artists, named Bungee Project, because “the action most closely resembled the experience of death, which was how I felt back then,” she said. “The cord was so resilient and powerful that the jump was actually the safest.” New York seemed to reward her goodbye gesture with a good turnout and laudatory feedback; then, she got another boost.

“I was told I could rent this place during the pop-up,” Huang said of her Stanton Street storefront. Many of her stories revolve around rent: Chinatown landlords rejected her, finding a bookstore unlikely to be profitable. Since she spoke Mandarin rather than Cantonese, she was regarded as an outsider; an elderly woman said no during COVID, fearing that Huang would return to China any second.

Inserting herself in this neighborhood was a mere accident, “pure luck.” Neighbors include franchise coffee shops, an F line stop right around the corner, restaurants and delis, but few other artistic stores. Yet SoHo, commercial and gentrified, is close and shoppers often pass by.

Bungee Space now breaks even, Huang says. She had to borrow from her family to get started, and is gradually repaying the loan. Most people come in for coffee, though seating is limited to six, but clothing and accessories generate the most revenue and cover the rent. On a Thursday afternoon, Bungee Space sold roughly 20 coffees, a cross-body bag, a puffer jacket, and a wool coat, all three priced at over $500.

One of Huang’s two part-time workers, Sixuan Tong, 26, says she hopes Bungee Space will continue. “I’m not planning to leave,” she said, though she had to take freelance graphic design work to supplement for her earnings at the store. Tong laughingly describes her boss as “a bit too nice to people” and “fucking crazy doing all this shit;” she also invokes words like confidence, faith, devotion, and courage. “She’s the most carefree person, and she’s super responsible at the same time,” said Tong.

Huang has made friends through her store, hosting weekly book launches and artists’ talks that require lots of planning but make little money. One customer describes the vibe as “a fan club.” Leila-Anaïs Pyrczak, 22, who interned at Bungee Space last summer, often found herself at parties rather than marketing events. “How they work was so different from other places—you invite friends, friends invite more friends,” she said.

Selling his prints, Huang met artist and choreographer Matty Davis. She moderated an intimate Q&A in his Brooklyn apartment on a recent Sunday. The audience of 15, including Nick Massarelli, a book designer and independent publisher, who enjoyed Bungee Space so much that he decided to launch his new magazine there.

Huang, wearing a long black shirtdress, asked Davis questions that prompted friendly laughter. “Why do you seek so much pain in your performance?”

The cozy, artistic interior felt like an extension of Bungee Space. The evening light dimmed. Davis’s dachshund dozed. As the talk ended, the small, packed study buzzed with chatter. Continuing to discuss art with Davis, Huang sat in a corner of the green velvet sofa. “It was only after COVID that people realized how important a physical space is,” she said.

For the next step, Huang hopes to host more art exhibits, showing objects unobtainable in galleries. But she can’t apply for nonprofit grants as Bungee Space, because it’s a business entity. She is also unwilling to seek investors. A financially self-sustainable store frees her to remain independent and all-embracing. “Investors want different thing,” she mused. “If I can find someone who shares my vision and wants to work together, of course I will. But after years, that person still hasn’t emerged,” she added, pausing. “Which tells you something.”

What Huang values most is independent, critical thinking. She calls identity politics and curatorial methodologies “traps,” and describes her attitude as unswayed by established rules. “In the art world, art has become a mask for business,” she said. “I want to use business as a mask for real art.”