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Business As Unusual: RedHanded and hillbillyhip Grand Opening Celebrations
PHOTO BY JAYNI SHUMAN Anastasia Fite poses in front of RedHanded, her revitalized “arts center in a thimble” and treasure chest boutique is located right across the street from the library, for those planning to attend the Grand Re-opening festivities on March 26 and 27. PHOTO BY FLAVIA POTENZA Gidget Zapata, owner of hillbillyhip, and her dog, Cowboy, adorn a bicycle donated to HIP (Helping Inspire People) Thrift, a thrift store that will donate proceeds to charities when it becomes a non-profit. The Grand Opening carnival on April 2 is a celebration and fundraiser for HIP Thrift, to say nothing of a good time.
By Sage Knight
RedHanded is an arts center in a thimble. But diminuitive Anastasia Fite’s little shop, sitting across the street from the library construction site, has big ambitions.
On March 26 and 27, 2011, RedHanded’s grand re-opening will celebrate its rebirth as an arts center with live music on three stages.
“Basically I’m throwing a festival,” says Fite.
It’s hard to imagine that so much inspiration, energy, and action can fit into one store and one person, especially since both are quite tiny. There is a sense that if you just add water, the store, like a seed or a sponge, will sprout into an entire arts rainforest. It could happen. Topanga is no ordinary town and Fite is no ordinary woman.
RedHanded first opened in December of 2009 as a retail store where the business struggled. With the festival, Fite is reviving her arts center dream.
On festival day, one stage will sport a parabolic dish that was found in the creek with its platform made of palettes donated by Ernie Demontreux at Topanga Lumber, which Fite turned into gold by spray painting through lace.
The second stage in front of the store has no room for an audience, but that’s no problem says Fite: “I’m gonna throw blankets on the ground across the street for the audience to sit on. Then every car that passes by is part of the show.”
The third stage? Fite could fit a football team in a fortune cookie and everyone would feel welcome. The yellow room is a space smaller than a Canyon kitchen, but can comfortably fit 15 people plus an acoustic performer.
“Whatever you make has value, and here’s a place for it,” says Fite. “This is Topanga’s showcase for everybody on their way to Topanga Gallery.”
RedHanded product lines include art from many local craftspeople. Fite’s own line of Topanga products, her designs, include the Topanga Island Pirate Map; the Metro Line, “27-valley-to-beach” pictures of Saint Topanga; Topanga Creek Synchronized Swimming; and the truly native “No shoes, No teeth, No service.” Multiple colors, styles, and sizes include men, women and baby onesies made with natural dyes. Best part: you can learn to silk screen it yourself.
Fite’s treasure chest boutique is “a true democracy,” displaying art from more than 40 local artisans and is run “more like an educational non-profit than a retail store where visitors can spend the day learning something. Whether I’m crocheting, silk screening or film editing, I’ll teach you how to do it, too.
“I’m a school. All I need is to be able to pay the rent. It’s a great place for moms to visit while the kids are checking out books at the library.”
Look for two antique gumball machines outside. One for kids where for 25¢ they can get clues for one of her many ongoing treasure hunts. The other, Fortune Cookie Confessionals, is an art process for customers to write a secret, a quip or a one-liner, which she calls her “waywords,” and then transform it into a wearable piece of art.
Coming soon are wearable treasure hunts to special places in the Canyon (among them ancient burial sites) with coordinates hand-painted on clothing.
Another place is set aside for toys made by kids for kids. Fite’s favorite items include “all things shippy,” perhaps for mariners from the Topanga Creek Yacht Club.
“I care deeply about this Canyon and my community and want to give back in the ways I would have loved access to as a Topanga kid” says Fite. I want to inspire other young people to get involved in their community in positive, creative and collaborative ways.”
RedHanded is located at 155 Topanga Canyon Blvd. Open Tuesday - Sunday, 12-6 p.m.. Call (310) 455-3400 or visit www.redhandedtopanga.com.
From Topanga to New York, Paris, London, Rome, Topanga
Fite was born in Topanga in 1979. The actual location was St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, but what are a few degrees in coordinates? She is definitely Topanga homegrown, quick to state that her mom took her home and gave her Topanga milk immediately.
She lived here until she was sixteen, then spent eleven years between New York, Paris, London and Rome, gaining an education at Cornell University and La Sorbonne, programming and curating film series, founding galleries and screening rooms, running independent and retrospective theatres and more.
Four years ago, she broke her back, “an injury that brought me home,” she says. She came back and “decided to do for my hometown what I’d done all over the world.”
In the East Village of New York in 2003, she created “Movieoke,” like karaoke, only with film. For this bit of ingenuity, Fite earned her place on the cover of the Arts section of the New York Times, was featured on CNN, MSNBC, and in many more International publications. However, she is home now. Adding emphasis to her Canyon loyalty, she pulls down her lower lip to reveal the tattoo inside: “90290.”
A true inclusionist, Fite is dedicated to community spirit. When not at RedHanded, she’s at the Topanga Community Club, where she’s served as manager and rental agent for the past two years. She took the job “because I grew up playing there,” and she volunteers many more hours than she clocks, creating and hosting fundraising events, making promo films for Topanga Days, and archiving TCC’s history including a 20-minute documentary, “In the Beginning,” that she co-produced with Tom Mitchell, which was presented at TCC’s 60th anniversary. Fite also created the “Planet Topanga” program, logo, name and website for TCC, as a way to accommodate those who want to host cultural programs and events while also raising funds for The Community Club.
For the last two years she programmed and produced the culminating night of the Topanga Film Festival, “Best of Topanga,” where she has also premiered three of her short films on Topanga, which will become part of her larger, ongoing feature-length documentary film on Topanga Canyon.
Fite has boundless energy and is on a mission to validate people who like to make things. Her goal is dynamic, childlike, and contagious.
“No adult ever told me it’s okay. It’s not only okay, it’s fulfilling and can be a lifestyle – you show me yours, I’ll show you mine, or we can do it together.”
By Stephanie Dubov
Come one, come all to an old-timey carnival in the heart of Topanga – festive attire a must!
When Saturday, April 2 rolls around, it’s time to don your old tie-dye T-shirts and dresses, your handmade sandals and Fairchild moccasins and, in the name of a good cause and a great idea, be transported back to 1969, while you help celebrate the official grand opening of hillbillyhip and HIP Thrift at “A Fool’s Celebration” in the Old Center plaza.
The old-style carnival begins at 2 p.m., goes to whenever and promises live entertainment, games, raffles and maybe even a birthday celebration or two. It is also a fundraiser for HIP (Helping Inspire People) Thrift, the charity part of hillbillyhip.
Gidget and Cecil Zapata have always believed in giving back to the community through their great love for art and music. They also feel that the children of that community have to be included in the process.
When they had a thrift store on the big island of Hawaii, Gidget started a program to give ukuleles to kids who wanted to learn how to play. She never had to use any of her own money because as soon as people heard about what she was doing, donations of instruments began pouring in. Not one child who applied to the program went away empty handed. Now she’s come up with a way to do something like that for kids in Topanga and adults as well.
When HIP Thrift becomes a non-profit, they will start a foundation to fund supplies for both children and adults in the areas o
