From a block away, you could
smell the Nag Champa in the air,
like a sandalwood smoke signal.
As you got closer you could hear
the music echoing through the
canyon of Manhattan, then see
the crowd outside the building,
sometimes 40 or 50 deep,
spilling off the sidewalk onto
Lafayette Street. The locus of it
all was ostensibly a store—but
back then, when it first opened,
in 1994, retail concerns seemed
incidental to the real purpose
of Supreme, which sprung to life
as a frenetic meet-up spot for
the growing downtown New York
skate community. ¶In those
days Lafayette Street wasn’t the