Jimmy Webb’s ‘I Need More’ Departs Orchard Street Today
Today marks the final day in business for I Need More, the punk rock boutique founded by the late Jimmy Webb on the Lower East Side.
As celebration of both three years on Orchard Street, and its creator, the business is holding a final fire sale. It’s a sudden closure for I Need More, which follows three months after the passing of Webb at the age of 62 from stomach cancer.
Jimmy Webb was a fixture of the Lower East Side until his death.
In 1975, he ran away from his upstate home at age 16 with a pillowcase of clothes and no money. He quickly found refuge in the East Village punk scene, and later became one of its most recognizable denizens. Webb eventually fell into heroin addiction for 20 years and lived in Tompkins Square Park, eventually returning upstate.
He got sober, though, and wrote a letter to the owner of Trash & Vaudeville on St. Mark’s Place, seeking a job. That stint lasted nearly two decades, in which he became manager and primary buyer.
Three years ago, after leaving Trash & Vaudeville, Webb opened the spiritual successor, I Need More.
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