La Petite Mort is Struggling to Survive on Lower Orchard Street
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February 2015
“In many ways we were doing great,” notes Osvaldo Jimenez (aka SlutLust), co-owner of La Petite Mort on Orchard Street. “But it was only a matter of time before our financials finally caught up to the fun accolades and then we fell a month behind in rent.” His boutique of two-and-a-half years is struggling to stay afloat amidst tardy payments and a landlord who’s allegedly proceeding with eviction.
So Jimenez, like many before him, has turned to the fanbase for relief vis-a-vis crowdfunding website GoFundMe. The long-winded plea explains how the “opportunistic landlord” is trying to nullify the remaining seven years the throwback boutique has on the lease.
Our uh *ahem “opportunistic” landlords, noting the potential neighborhood change and realizing they could charge twice – if not triple for our 350 sq. ft. space – quickly moved to start proceedings for our eviction in order to nullify the remaining 7 years on our lease. They got some high powered lawyers who convinced them that the best way to move us out quickly was to tack on every single late fee per month for the past two years (that was never brought up prior to this) and demand that we pay for their lawyer and court fees. Mind you they still have over 6 months of our security deposit.
You don’t need an education higher than a 3rd grader to know that this is completely unfair.
So now La Petite Mort needs a favor…All we need is a minimum of 300 friends with $20 bucks each, or 6000 friends with just one dollar to spare.
Ideally $15k would be great as it would cover all our costs, but we need a minimum of $6k in order to start the negotiations. The remaining balance would go towards other store related debts, and any additional money will be used on 3 huge art installation projects that OJ has planned -a love note if you will, to the Lower East Side that raised him.
La Petite Mort (French slang for “Orgasm”) opened at 37 Orchard Street in late 2013. The brainchild of Jimenez and Kara Mullins struck a chord with nostalgists of 1990s pop apparel, and often decorated its security gate to match (e.g. Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan).
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