May 12-18, 2005

fine print

Anty Matter

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

by A.D. Amorosi

We come not to mourn Zipperhead, 407 South Street's epicenter of all things punk since 1980. We come to praise it. Where else can I go at 10 p.m. so to replenish my collection of violet Doc Martens, re-up my Exploited T-shirt collection or find something tartan and tight? With zippers?

Besides, there's nothing to eulogize. While reports have pitted biz-and-bricks owner Rick Millan against operators Rob and Stefanie Windfelder, the two parties claim neither communication nor monetary disputes.

The lease runs out July 1. They tried to negotiate a new one, but a Manhattan clothier offered Millan double the rent for 407 and 409 (currently home to Spaceboy Records).

"We've never run a failing business or missed a payment," says pointy haired Rob Windfelder. He and his wife, Stefanie, were longtime Zipperhead managers who became its proprietors in 2000. "We're moving. If you love the building go somewhere and cry, if you love what is inside the building don't sweat it."

Then there are the ants. Along the facade of Zipperhead, a klatch of fiber-glass and metal ants, 4 by 4 feet, pour from an open zipper. "We designed it in response to Copa's tropical facade and Lickety Split's waterfall scenes," says Millan. "We hired a carny prop-maker to build these things." While neither Millan nor the Windfelders remember the designer's name (they do know he was killed in a hit and run accident), his work will live on, whoever rents the property.

Any renter can change the name above the door. But it will be in Millan's contract that the ants and the zipper remain. "That will never change. I may even put a plaque on it — call it the Zipperhead Building. I won't just let it go away."

Not much is set in stone yet; Millan, a commercial realtor with multiple properties in the area, could put the Windfelders into a primo Fourth Street address. He still doesn't have a signed lease from the Manhattan clothing concern. "There's always room for that happy ending, with Rob and Stefanie resurrecting Zipperhead at 407," he says.

Millan is so into the ants — and the whole Zipperhead mythology — that he would have new metal ants designed and put onto the place at Fourth Street if the Windfelders decide to take it. "They're like family. I see a future in them," says Millan of the Windfelders and the ants.