The smell of patchouli and the sound of Parliament’s “Aqua Boogie” greeted me as I stepped through the door into Savage Instincts. The walls were painted a deep blood red and were adorned with photographs of San Francisco street scenes. Near the back hung a four-by-five flamenco tapestry, and at a small counter sat Sue Savage, a petite woman with gray-streaked dark-brown hair. When she saw how I reacted to the Parliament tune, which was coming in over the radio, she broke out a Parliament CD and filled the place with it.
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Savage, a 36-year-old MBA, opened the Bucktown shop last May to escape a 15-year career in software and high-tech marketing for such firms as J. Walter Thompson and Charles Schwab. Her last job, for a local consulting firm, pushed her over the brink into retailing. “It was just the most irrelevant thing I’d ever done in my life,” she says. “I decided I gotta do something I want to do now.”
“Hemp has a higher yield and is longer, stronger, and more absorbent than cotton,” she says. “It is friendlier to the environment than cutting down trees and planting cotton, which robs the soil.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Cynthia Howe.
