What Happened at 632 Hudson
Posted on: October 28, 2008Since that fateful day of Friday, April 18, 2008, when the fire occured above our former salon at 632 Hudson, we have received so many questions asking what really happened. People have assumed everything from the entire salon burning down, to a small roof fire on the neighboring building. The truth lies somewhere in between, and this was certainly one of the most crazy and bizarre days of our lives.
We had just started to take clients at our new flagship salon on 50 Bond Street earlier that week, although the space was far from completely ready. I was on Bond when at around 5:30pm – one of the busiest times in the salon – we began receiving frantic phone calls and text messages from our staff at 632 Hudson. Everyone was saying something about a fire, but no one seemed to know the severity of the situation, except that the fire department was forcing everyone to evacuate the building while the salon was packed with clients!
My husband, Arik, hopped on his Vespa and headed across town, while I continued to work on my clients. About 15 minutes later, cab after cab began pulling up to Bond with our stylists and their clients (some with color, plastic, and foils in their hair) piling out and making a b-line to the shampoo stations to rinse out the color! It was a scene like I’ve never witnessed before (and hope never to again) – like something out of a refugee movie if refugees were transported in yellow cabs.
The best line of the afternoon came from our Senior Stylist and salon manager, Antonio. He had three clients going when the fire started, two of them with color in their hair. When one of them expressed concern about the color not being rinsed out in time, Antonio replied cool and collected, in his Trinidad accent: “Don’t worry darling, it will take us ten minutes to get to Bond Street by cab, and by then you’ll be a perfect blond!” And a perfect blond she left later that evening.
It turned out that an electrical fire started on the roof of the townhouse during a wedding that was taking place there (the top two floors of the house were regularly rented as an event space). As distraught as we were about the extensive water damage that occurred throughout the salon from when the fire was put out, we felt really bad for the bride and groom who also had to evacuate with their entire wedding party! The whole block was closed off for about 2 hours, until the fire was completely put out and the fire department felt like it was safe to walk past our building again.
Arik later told me how when he got there and convinced the fire chief to let him into our space to inspect the damage, everything looked Ok at first, with just a bit of water dripping through the ceiling. “The water will take a few minutes to come through the building,” the fire chief explained. “You’ll have a lot of water damage.” And that we did – so much so that we never reopened that salon – especially since we were planning on moving soon anyway to yet another space that we were building at 407 W. 13th Street, just a couple of blocks away. For the time being our entire staff moved over to 50 Bond St. where together we pulled through the next challenge of trying to finish the space that all of a sudden become a full house. Thanks to our staff for helping to make this very difficult transition fairly smooth and in good spirits, and to our clients and friends for all of their support.
We also did not realize just how enormous that fire was until we saw it in the NY Post on the following day. Click on the PDF below if you want to see the full “Wedding-bell hell” article.
This is the roof of our former salon building at 632 Hudson
October 28th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Oh my gosh what a story!!! I can’t imagine being a guest (or bride) at that wedding.