About a dozen years ago, during my first visit to Group W Bench, my eyes became the kaleidoscopes The Beatles sang about, pulsing and dilating with the tangerine trees and marmalade skies inside this 1968-founded shop and shrine to hippie and artisan culture: thousands and thousands of specially sourced objects, from personal and historical artifacts to handmade pottery and jewelry to vintage and old-fashioned toys to religious and spiritual aids to witty postcards, gurgling fountains and flowy unisex pants, all of them somehow neatly arranged in a space the size of a studio apartment.
A recent visit confirmed that Bench’s kaleidoscopic feeling hasn’t changed at all. What has changed, as of last year, is the person steering this “boat on a river”: Aimee Nichio, though she’s not exactly a new face around the store. Her uncle, Raffael DiLauro, is Bench’s founder and was its longtime owner. Nichio, a Gen Xer, not a Boomer, spent some of her young adult years working in the shop as well as an erstwhile sister business, Gallery Raffael, whose focus on visual art has been absorbed into Bench.
Nichio bought the shop “because I love it. Because I love making people happy, when they find that perfect item that they’ve been looking for forever… That clothing item that looks fabulous on them. That jewelry piece that makes their whole face light up with joy. A toy that makes them laugh out loud when they see it. That pottery piece that they love so much and the design is so beautiful that they have to have it. Something they want to pass down to their kids. … Not just things that are made out of plastic and can be thrown away and [you] run to Walmart to replace it. I want [to offer] heirlooms… Treasures. I feel like I sell treasure.”
DiLauro “still comes around, makes sure I’m doing everything right, makes sure I’m doing everything his way,” she says with a laugh, before adding, in a serious tone, “But his way is the right way.” Part of that way involves restrictions intended to liberate. For example, Nichio says, “We have little signs that say, ‘No photos,’ because we want people to come in and be in the moment. That’s really important to us… We want people to come in and feel good, and relaxed, and enjoy the music and the incense.”
Thankfully, exceptions—a lot of them—were made to allow photos for this article. Scope them out, then visit the shop and ’scope out.
Written and photographed by Dan Mims. Image 1 features Aimee Nichio, framed in the foreground by the colorful tails of a windsock hanging outside Group W Bench.
