Disguised as a condemned building atop Kalamazoo’s West Main Hill sits the Timid Rabbit Magic and Masquerade Shop. The store’s draped front windows, cracking signage and peeling burgundy and purple paint job contrast the surrounding trappings of gleaming sprawl: Dominoes, KFC, and a Marathon gas station. The entrance is only accessible through a weed-ravaged driveway leading to a ten-spot parking lot in which a 1969 Cadillac hearse with a green siren light permanently rusts. Concrete walls painted orange and imitation stone painted burgundy and gray form the back façade as though a castle, store front and suburban home were surgically joined. Scattered against these walls lies an empty storage bucket as well as a Halloween candy witch’s cauldron, a blue piece of scrap wood and a trampoline. From outside, the back door’s “OPEN” sign is the only indication of life, but inside is a vital story of time-tested adaptation and fantasy.
Entering the Timid Rabbit is entering a world apart from the frantic West Main intersection. The muted whir of a heater and the buzzing of florescent lights fill the hanging air. Glade room fresheners placed throughout the store combat the sedentary musk of eleven thousand costumes squeezed onto racks and racks that cram all the way to the back wall forming a cramped maze of cotton, sequins, top hats and polyester.
The bells tied to the door jingle in the entrance of a woman in sweatpants. She apologizes for her tardy return of the red-fringed flapper dress that she rented three days prior. Behind the counter, shop co-owner Laura Gerard gently smiles. “You finally made it in!” she says. From under her unwashed hair, the woman’s face breaks.
“Oh, you have no idea; it’s just been the worst two days of my life. My fiancé has been cheating on me, and he decided to tell me about it today.”
Laura’s rehearsed motions freeze. “He decided to tell you about it today?”
“He thinks that he’s gonna come home tonight and everything’s gonna be great. But I’m going out tonight, tomorrow night…”
“Well you should. Just go have some fun. Don’t do anything stupid, but go have some fun. You need it”
“I’m just really distraught right now.”
The two chatter on like old friends about infidelity as Laura fines the woman only one day’s late fee. The bells jingle again, and Laura turns around, rolling her eyes. “I’m quite often the bartender," she says.
This isn’t the first time a stranger has sought refuge inside the Timid Rabbit.
“It happens a lot cause I’m older. I think they feel like they can sound off to me,” she says, letting a little pride seep from behind her gold-framed glasses. “A lot of people come in here and tell me their life story, but I always feel compelled to help them. I don’t know why.”
Laura is approachable in that Midwestern way with a kind voice that often slides into impersonations. Highlights streak her shoulder-length blond hair, and she works in jeans, a thick navy t-shirt and black Mary Janes. She laughs easily and often at others’ jokes as well as her own. Perhaps it’s Laura’s motherly presence that attracts needy customers to the shop. Or maybe people come in search of something else: a new identity, a different skin, a red flapper dress. If Laura’s prescription for heartbreak is masking the pain with fun, maybe disguise is medicinal.
Moments later, the phone rings. Resting her elbows on the glass countertop with her back arched, Laura responds to the caller’s request for a Boy George costume with all the professionalism of a hospital receptionist, which she once was.
His hair was brown right? Okay. I’ll look,” she says as she peers around the store from behind the counter. From Laura’s viewpoint, giant mascot heads of Rudolph, a pig and three Easter bunnies lay on the worn beige carpet. Masks of the Cowardly Lion, the Burger King, Darth Maul and a pit bull stare at her expectantly on shelves affixed to the ceiling. A Richard Nixon mask with a cracked mouth perches on the seat of a red velvet king’s throne placed in front of a rack of costumes with labels like “Sea Diva Mermaid,” and “Medical Mary Jane Nurse.” This collection of dresses bearing midriffs, fiber optic miniskirts and deep necklines is designated for college theme party apparel.
Across the room stands a cluttered set of glass-encased countertops backed with bookshelves filled with curiosities: a Mardi Gras disguise, a book on déjà vu, a rubber dog mask displayed atop a drum of drinking water, a Day-Glo pink wig, a latex set of bear teeth, a dried puddle of wood glue, a collection of wooly mammoth fossil molds, two motionless Disco balls, oversized magic cards, doodles on scrap paper of Yin-Yangs, a tooth container, and a syringe.
This stockpile took 30 years to amass under the ownership of Laura and her husband Antony. The costume rental side of the business began out of the couple’s 11th street home, which cramped the family’s living space. The shop found permanent store front West Main in 1990. Over that time period, the couple raised two sons and the costume rental and magic shop expanded into a Karate school run by their youngest son, Nick, a temporary apartment upstairs for their eldest son, Tony II, and his girlfriend and home to a mask and mascot-making workshop and special effects studio dubbed “Gerard Enterprises.”
Gerard Enterprises used to travel the trade show circuit across the country, where the family would sell their hand-made costumes, masks and mascot bodies and heads, and hobnob with the magic world’s elite. At one point, Antony produced and sold almost 30,000 latex masks each year, which he shipped all over the country.
After September 11, though, the industry changed, says Laura. “The first year it was all fear, and the media did that, unfortunately. They were telling people, ‘don’t go trick-or-treating ‘cause they’ll bomb you,’” she said. “After 9/11, the smaller businesses started dropping out only because the Wal-Marts and the Party Citys took over, and the smaller mom and pop shops couldn’t handle it anymore. We can’t beat their prices. Wal-mart buys for millions of stores around the country, and we buy for one store. Our prices wholesale are more than what they’re retailing them for. So, it got pretty hard.”
Then came the recession, and business got even worse. “People lost their jobs, and we’re not the type of business that you need,” said Laura. “We’re the type of business that if you have extra money and want to have a party you’re going to have fun, but people were worried about paying their bills and eating, not about throwing parties and renting a costume.”
The shop’s diversified business model, in which the Gerards rent out costumes in addition to selling them, ended up rescuing The Timid Rabbit while others filed for Chapter 11. “We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire,” said Antony. “If one business does poorly, then at least we’re still able to stay open.” However, the rental option necessitates the daily minutia of tracking down unreturned costumes with the police and repairing damaged rentals. “We’ve had people fall into fires in polyester costumes,” said Laura “We had a guy return a vintage tuxedo with no sleeves ‘cause he went into a mosh pit. We’ve had people cut wigs. We’ve had people cut pants, staples, glue, things that you just don’t think people would do.”
Worse than removing staples from hemmed hoop skirts, the true occupational hazard for the Gerards lies on the creative end of their costume design. “We have to be very careful about what we make,” said Laura. By law, the Gerards cannot buy a costume someone made from a pattern because it’s trademarked. “There are a lot of laws, and I don’t understand some of them,” she said. “But Barney started the whole thing. He put I don’t know how many costume shops out of business.”
According to Laura, Barney representatives hired an attorney who called every costume shop in the country, feigning interest in a purple dinosaur suit. After one such phone call in which Laura offered the attorney a similar costume, the couple received a cease and desist order and a $100,000 copyright lawsuit. Antony served as their attorney and the judge threw out the case after three years. “I try to keep that fiasco out of my memory banks,” admits Antony. “When someone takes three and a half years of a person’s life, it’s not fun.”
The same diverse business model that has supported the Gerard family has been internalized into their personas. Antony’s chance donning of a layer’s suit marks only one character in a long list of roles he’s played. A sturdy man with a blue Hawaiian shirt, and gray roots peeking out beneath shoulder length wisps of platinum blonde hair, Antony proudly recalls working as an event planner, a special effects engineer, a professional locksmith, a self taught paleontologist, a professional clown, a video producer, a world-touring magician, a leather smith, and an author. “Most of what I do is more of a passion than a business,” he says.
Laura, a former timid rabbit herself, has also been transformed by character. Years of interacting with a needy consumer base taught her confidence. “I’ve always been creative, but I didn’t think I was,” she said. “I think I got a lot more self-aware. I used to be shy and thought I was ugly and stupid—things like that. Now, if people don’t like me, that's okay. Being in the spotlight helps,” she laughed. “Now I’m the bartender.”
The Timid Rabbit’s greatest trick, say the Gerards, is its ability to make fantasies come true. “We try not to be your typical Halloween shop,” says Antony, identifying himself with his store. He says people use costumes for affordable escape. “A lot of people want to take a vacation, but they can’t afford a vacation,” he said. “When a person walks into the shop, we talk to them for a moment to try to find out a little more about them and then give them suggestions. When they wear the costumes, they can be literally anything they want to be.”
