Penguin Flashlights To The Rescue

We knew the storm was coming as we followed its progress up the east coast. My parents called  Saturday morning to let us know it was already snowing in New York, so we knew it wouldn’t be be long.  Snowing in New York in October was rare indeed and when the weather report told us to expect perhaps a foot of snow before Halloween we couldn’t believe it.  In the end we got less than half a foot but what we got was worse,  much worse.  About 4 – 6 inches of wet, heavy snow fell on Northampton and the Pioneer Valley area that still had a fairly heavy tree canopy because of an unusually wet and mild Autumn.  The recipe was a disaster.  Wet snow, leaves on the trees, something had to give

Sophie (holding a penguin flashlight) on a very dark Main St. the 1st night of the blackout.

and in very short order it was the trees.  Within a few hours after the snow began to fall large tree limbs began to snap sending many down onto power lines.  As the night went on more broke along with entire trees that came down, and with six hours after the first snowflake about a million people lost power in Central and Western New England.   Around 6 p.m. the lights began to flicker in our home, and I had a feeling that the lights would soon be going off completely, so we began to scour our home for candles, matches, flashlights, portable radio’s and batteries. Then I remembered that the day before I received a shipment of 48 Penguin Flashlights, batteries included.  The batteries included part is important because without them the flashlights are useless.  The lights flickered one last time at 6:38 pm and then darkness.  The kids shrieked with delight as we lit our candles, although when they realized this was not a game, and nothing worked (including the tv and computer) they were not so delighted. With our candles and the one or two flashlights we were able to find our way upstairs to Penguin Place and there like some buried treasure was the case of penguin flashlights, ripping the box open like a kid on Christmas morning. One by one my kids and I took the flashlights out of their packaging, put in the batteries and turned them on, triumphantly bringing them downstairs were they would illuminate our nights for the next two adventurous evenings. We even used them to explore our blacked out, snowy neighborhood.  During the daytime when some of my daughters friends came over we gave them flashlights if they didn’t have any.  Our electricity finally did come back on Monday morning, and the snow is mostly gone, but thanks to our penguin flashlights illuminating our way a couple of potentially very scary dark nights were fun and bright.  Now, if only those flashlights could have made coffee.

My daughter Sophie (left) and her friend Frida with our penguin flashlights during the blackout

25th Anniversary Bio Part 5: Penguin Place.com 2000 – Present

After 15 years at the Seaport I bid farewell for good while taking a risk that on-line shopping was the way of the future.  I took my lone full-time employee Heather along to Brooklyn as she’d been with me since the Fulton Market days.   I figured I’d not only need some company, but Heather also knew more about computers than me and of course I’d need her help just in case this internet thing actually did take off.  We set up shop in the back room of my Brooklyn loft that summer and as the orders trickled in, and I mean trickle in, we mailed them out and waited.   We only filled on average three or four a day those first couple of lazy months, and most of our modest sales those early days were still via our mail order catalog.  So, we primarily spent that first Summer  in Brooklyn on a sort of  South Street Seaport free holiday.  Finally emancipated from having to be open by 10 a.m. and not closing before 9 p.m., each and every day, 365 days a year for a decade and a half.   Now, it was just sleeping late, renting movies, long lunches,  website updates in my pajamas, and what most people take for granted, finally  having free weekends like the rest of the world.   Slow sales or not, this was the kind of break I had only dreamed of.   Meanwhile in Baltimore the sun had yet to set on the last of the Next Stop…South Pole franchise.  But in September of 1999, three months after the N.Y. store closed my Harborplace lease was finally up and once again my friends and I rented a U-Haul and took my penguins home.  What made the  Brooklyn “Igloo” interesting is that I brought in all the fun penguin fixtures and display pieces from my now closed shops as well as the actual penguin inventory.  Perhaps it was nostalgia or perhaps I was just using what was already available, but even though my new location was on the 5th floor of an industrial building on the Brooklyn waterfront, with no sign or buzzer downstairs to indicate we were there,  Heather and I set the cavernous, windowless room up to look just like one of our stores.  The jewelry was back in their display case, the penguin race was on its icy looking table ready to escalate and slide at a moments notice, dozens of penguin plush sat neatly in rows on the same cabinet shelves that they did at the Seaport and the penguin shaped t-shirt displays were up on the wall.  The only big difference was the larger store storage tables now held packing supplies and boxes, and the table tops in the center of the room that once displayed books and calendars were now free to pack penguins.  Oh yeah, the biggest difference was  we were now in a windowless room on top floor of a 19th century factory building.
The first months sales slowly picked up by Autumn, and the coming holiday season proved reassuring.  Then in 2000 it seemed the digital age had arrived and along with it the world would learn of Penguin-Place.com.  It all started when a friend of mine working for Brooklyn Bridge Magazine wrote a full page article about us, then about a month later myself and Penguin Place found ourselves on the front page of the N.Y. Times Sunday City Section, and a month after that a half page spread in People Magazine. The picture on the Penguin Place Home Page is of Heather and I from the People article.

People Magazine Picture from 2000

That was followed by a couple of t.v. and radio appearances and presto we were not just on the map, but all over it.  With all that free publicity and more people feeling secure about  on-line ordering our holiday season at the turn of the millenium made me feel that leaving the Seaport a year earlier was the right call.   By early Summer of 2000 it was time to decide to commit to another print catalog shoot for the upcoming season, but by then I was secure enough with the web site, and fed up enough with all the time, work and cost that went into my mail order catalog that I dropped it altogether, never to return.   Sadly, it was also around that time that Heather bid farewell Penguin Place and moved to Boise, Idaho for of all things, a boyfriend.     Later that Summer Jeannie came on board the penguin train as my assistant, I got married (not to Jeannie, but to Molly).  Then on the morning of September 11th in full view of myself and the penguins the unthinkable happened.  Not knowing what to do that afternoon after starring at the news all day I checked my e-mail and to my surprise found a few orders.  How could people order on a day like today I thought?  But then I read the messages that went along with the orders.  Most went along the lines of ”it’s my little boys birthday next week and he loves penguins, I know given your location you may have trouble getting these out to us but please let me know if you can.  He’s going to be five, he loves penguins and I’d hate to disappoint him”.   Although the streets were blocked off in my neighborhood for the next few days being we were so close to the East River Bridges, the next day I walked the 3/4 mile distance to the post office with the packages in hand in my own small penguin gesture of not letting the terrorists win and not disappointing little Jimmy.
The holiday season of 2001 was obviously a sober one and Penguin Place did what it could by raising $1000 for the Fireman’s Widows and Orphans Fund through sales of our Penguin Of Liberty shirt.

But, as the years past from that tragedy and we waddled on into the new millennium the future looked promising indeed for Penguin Place.  Molly and I had a little girl named Sophie and then came Rose.   The Penguin Place igloo in turn was chopped in half to accommodate our growing family as we built another bedroom (such is loft living), and in 2007 our original and at this point antiquated web site was traded in for the present (now also antiquated) web site.  In 2007 we also began to feel that our long time live / work loft on Water St. in Brooklyn was in jeopardy as a real estate developer had purchased our building  during the boom and was quickly emptying it of tenants.  The first to go was the commercial businesses on the floors below us, and next came the residential lofts. Being in a unique situation among my neighbors as we not only lived there, but had a few thousand penguins to account for as well we held out as long as we could, but realized by the end of 2008 that we could not fight our new landlord alone, so in 2009 my wife and I decided after coming to terms that we could not duplicate our situation in Brooklyn anywhere in the NY area (or at least in a NY area that we wanted to live)  decided to relocate to Northampton, Mass.  Why Northampton?  Well, it’s a great little city, Molly has family there, our new place is perfect and right downtown, the landlord loves (o.k. likes) penguins and is more than o.k. that I have Penguin Place in his building (and the Igloo actually has windows with lovely views),  the schools are excellent and it’s a wonderful place to raise a family.  Plus,  we’re only 2 1/2 hours from N.Y.C.  which  ironically is just about how long it took for me to go from the Seaport via the A & F trains and  Q-1 bus all the way home to my parents Queens apartment that first night a mere 25 years ago.

Eric with daughter Sophie fielding questions during his penguin talk at Sophie's 1st grade class in October 2009

Penguin Lawn Ornaments

A couple of years ago when Penguin Place found that a company had purchased the defunct Union Products lawn ornament company and was bringing back the 22″ tall plastic penguin lawn ornaments my heart went a waddling.  But,  in this case sentiment got in the way of practicality.  The large size of these penguins made them expensive to ship (both receiving and shipping them).  Shipping companies (UPS, Fed Ex and USPS) were now using much more stringent dimensional weight calculations and the size of these wonderful penguins simply made them to expensive to ship and sadly prohibitive for us to carry them  anymore.  But, last week while shopping with my daughter in downtown Northampton we found a very fun store on Main St. called Faces was offering the very same penguin lawn ornaments and also had a very cool decorative lawn ornament display along the stairs to their ground floor.  Anyway, it brought back penguin lawn ornament memories and we love Faces.

Fun penguin lawn ornaments line the shelves in Faces

Very Proud Papa Penguin

Rose On The Way To Daycare (I Mean Camp)

I know it’s the day before Halloween, but who cares. The most important day for the toddling parents of Northampton is the annual Halloween P.I. Daycare (we like to call it camp) Parade down Main Street at 10:30 a.m. when the whole town comes out to look at about 75 pre-schoolers in various states of adorableness and sigh a collective awe sooooo cute. As you may have read my two year old Rose has been insisting on being a cow (we somehow inherited a cow costume last year), and although I was not totally convinced she has kept up this bovine fixation through most of October. That is until last night when she agreed that penguin costume would be cooler than a cow. Duh!?  But, as two year old’s are how you might say, fickle.  I was not convinced that she’d follow through and waddle out the door this morning in all her black and white polyester splendor.  But, to my very pleasant surprise and absolute glee, not only did she wear it and waddle proudly in the parade, but she insisted on wearing it out the door this morning and waddled all the way to daycare, I mean camp in her costume, webbed feet and all. Yup, that’s my girl.

Look’s Like the Kids Will Be Waddling

Sophie Ponders If A Penguin Costume Is Cool Enough

In an act of desperation, luck and good timing I asked my two year daughter Rose if she wanted to be a penguin for tomorrows Toddler Halloween Parade down Main Street. She had been steadfast in saying for more than a week that she only wanted to be a cow, and Sophie my oldest has been a cat for 3 years in a row. So when I posed the penguin question just before bedtime Rose who will do anything to put off going to bed said yes and that she wanted to try the costume on. O.K. I thought, this bedtime stalling may work out for both of us as I promptly bolted into the penguin place “costume vault” and in a flash had one deluxe, size 2-4 penguin costume in hand. After a quick out of the plastic, over the head, arms in the flippers, hood up and over head and kids feet in the webbed costume feet she was parading and waddling in front of the full length mirror like she was auditioning for the road company of Happy Feet The Musical. With a big grin she declared “O.K. daddy, I’ll be a penguin.” With that said, my 6 year old instantly blurted out, “Daddy, I want to be a penguin too.” Back to the penguin costume vault and return with a 7-10 costume in hand. Same thing, out of plastic, over head, arms in flippers, hood up on head, feet on. Everyone is cute and happy. Now I’ve gone from no penguins in the house to all the kids are penguins. The only caveat is that Sophie wants to remove her big red bow tie. Done. Now, let’s see if they change their minds in the morning and I end up with a cow and a cat instead of a pair of penguins. Kids.

Rose Cheerfully Waddles At Home