Fx18 to close its doors after 29 years in business
Nearly three decades after its inception, the reputable Fx18 will be shutting its doors at the end of the month.
Libby Macalister, the current owner of the establishment, recently reflected on her 13 years in the position. Over the past few months, Macalister has been searching for a prospective buyer.
With limited housing across Taos County, buyers either find it difficult to get a place to live, or they don’t want to bother with the commute. Macalister herself has had to deal with similar issues. Living in Los Alamos,
her daily commute is not only long but also hazardous. According to Macalister, the housing situation in Taos even made it difficult to retain employees. On the eve of closure, Fx18 has only one employee aside from Macalister herself.
Many have been shocked by the news, as the store was a nifty gift destination. For Macalister and Sanda Pe ina, the weekend employee, Fx18 has been a place for people to casually mingle.
“It’s really made me connect with the community because, having a small business, I feel like I don’t have the chance to get out and explore,” Macalister said. “I’m always doing things in my own shop, so these people that come in to get gifts are sharing their stories — it makes me feel connected.”
While the store mainly featured handmade jewelry, Macalister said each owner of the store brought in their own vision, a tradition she kept alive by stocking the shelves with practical items with a funky twist — items from local artists and from people she knew around the country. No matter what, her goal was to provide shoppers with interesting gifts at an affordable price.
Having a nearly 30-year legacy and a habit of creating customer loyalty, Fx18 has fans nationwide. Macalister recalled seeing children return to the shop and watching
them grow over the years. Pecina would give virtual tours of the store to her friends on the east coast, while other customers would make annual visits — some having made the trip ever since the earliest years of the store.
“I will be sad to see Fx18 close because I shop for gifts for friends here, and I have been since 1997,” Pecina said. “I used to buy stuff here and take it back to Washington, D.C. because we didn’t have a cool gift shop — in D.C.! I would load up my luggage and take it back there and give little gifts to people, and people were like ‘where did you get this cool candle?’ And I’m like, ‘Taos, New Mexico!’”
One customer, Debra Schor, stopped by the store on Sunday (April 2). Old friends of Macalister’s and a long-time customer, they immediately began to chat.
“Can I tell you my story?” Schor asked amid the din of store activity. “So, I live in New York. I take pictures of outfits, and I send them to Libby, and I say ‘I need earrings to go with this outfit,’ and then she takes a picture of half a dozen things. Then we circle the stuff, and she tells me what she thinks. More than once we’ve done this.”
“I see people making new connections here,” Pe ina said. “It’s a place for spontaneous interac
tion, and it really captures that Taos magic where anything can happen at any given moment. I think there’s something about the uniqueness of the inventory that catalyzes this kind of engagement between people.”
Fx18 began in 1994 when a 29-year-old Ruth Lemansky-Guzman opened the store in El Prado, at the current location of Taos Fur Styling. She gave the building a bright coat of paint and lived in the back room for three years. After running Fx18 during the day, she would close up and go to the Taos Inn for her night job as a cocktail waitress.
“There was this crop of silversmiths that used to show up at the Taos Inn on Saturday or Friday nights at 11 o’clock because they knew we had cash in our pockets — the cocktail waitresses,” Lemansky-Guzman said. “I got to know all of these great artists, and they were selling in Santa Fe, but there was no one in Taos that would carry their work because it wasn’t traditional; it had a more modern spin to it.”
Fx18 became the storefront for this new wave of silversmiths, carrying several notable artists, such as Miranda Hicks, Maria Samora and the three brothers Rick, Ron and Michael Montaño. LemanskyGuzman would offer these artists cash up-front, as opposed to consigning them, which she found unfair.
She ran the store for seven years almost entirely on her own, save for the assistance of her friends along the way, before selling it to Gina Azzari in 2001, who relocated the store to Kit Carson Road and later to its current location on Bent Street.
When asked what “Fx18” meant, Lemansky-Guzman gave a hearty laugh.
“It could have its own meaning,” Lemansky-Guzman said. “It couldn’t be defined. My favorite thing was, two or three years in, [when] somebody would say, ‘I saw this thing I thought you would like. You should carry it because it’s so Fx18.’”
To Macalister, it’s hard to see the shop go without someone to carry on the torch, something that has been a theme at Fx18. Macalister remarked on the “amazing, powerful, cool, creative” women who preceded her as owner. The third in the line, Macalister is heartbroken to see its doors close. However, her hope is not gone — if Fx18 doesn’t find a buyer before the end of the month, Macalister has considered moving the store online.
“It’s so sad that it’s closing,” Lemansky-Guzman said. “It’s almost 30 years; it’s outrageous it was able to exist that long and be able to thrive. The locals accepted it so beautifully, and people really were loyal to it.”