Halloween central

Standing ready with a plethora of costumes, gag gifts and curiosities for sale are manager Kim Bulava (left) and owner Joanne Linker of JJ Blinkers in down-town Antioch, Ill.  (Photo by Bruce Heard)
Standing ready with a plethora of costumes, gag gifts and curiosities for sale are manager Kim Bulava (left) and owner Joanne Linker of JJ Blinkers in down-town Antioch, Ill. (Photo by Bruce Heard)

JJ Blinkers has a costume for every whim

By Janet Deaver-Pack

Correspondent

It’s the time for all wannabe witches, pirates, princesses, cowpokes, homicidal maniacs, ghouls, wizards, gangsters, and flappers to check their costumes – Halloween is approaching fast.

Now second only to Christmas in popularity, the last day of October brings out the fun in everyone. And one area store is more than ready to meet any Halloween need you have.

The maroon-painted brick store in the middle of Antioch’s first downtown block looks like a regular business. Its neighbors are regular buildings featuring a pub and eatery, a sweet shop, a jeweler, and the Chamber of Commerce. The disguise works, even with bright yellow and black signs in the two picture windows proclaiming COSTUMES.

Eclectic displays below those signs invite closer looks. The door opens on a place filled floor-to-ceiling and end-to-end with masks, makeup, magic kits, novelties of all kinds, glimmering carnival beads, gag gifts, a cemetery plot or two, and a larger-than-life lighted pumpkin-headed robotic ghoul that utters terrible threats in a sepulchral voice. And costumes are everywhere. All this is accompanied by spooky music.

The knowledgeable staff is normally in costume. A young lady named Jordan Frye is working during a recent visit. Her short gingham dress and her pigtails evoke memories of dolls, but she has suture-like marks across both cheeks and across her forehead known as a “zipper face.” She’s dressed as the character Sally from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

Even the manager and the owner are in costumes. What the windows proclaimed is true – this place has costumes of all kinds and sizes.

Joanne Linker (in the black and red with the black feather fascinator) and her partner, Rich Hart, began JJ Blinkers almost 30 years ago. Their business anniversary is Memorial Day 2015.

“We started selling novelty items,” Joanne explains. “Our first customers came back, and asked for more, especially silly stuff like gag gifts.”

So they added more, and more, expanding from a small counter in the front flanked by simple displays to fill the entire shop to the point it looks like it might burst. When asked how much inventory the store carries, Joanne smiles and shrugs, “A lot.”

 

Costumes to gag gifts

Kim Bulava has been the manager here for 15 years. “It just pieced itself together,” she said. That would make it a store that grew itself. On a recent visit Kim is “The Crazy Cat Lady,” dressed in a coppery-colored sleep shirt patterned with striped cats, a blonde wig with pink curlers, black glasses with huge rhinestone curlicues that tangle with her curlers, and ruby sequined house slippers.

The items shoppers discover in this clean and well-organized store include everything from note cards to gag gifts to (as the advertising states) rubber chickens and Whoopee Cushions. And bunches of costumes, wigs, masks, and other things too numerous to mention.

“We sell year-round,” Joanne said. “There always seems to be a holiday or celebration going on that requires someone to get a costume.”

People buy costumes for murder mystery dinners, theme parties, bar parties, Oktoberfest (German and Bavarian themes). There are “era” parties that target a certain generation or decade. And school children want costumes for book reports to dress as the character their report is about. High schools have Spirit Week. Daddy and daughter dancing partners need costumes, too. Then there are the big celebrations of Mardi Gras and Halloween, when costumes are expected on everyone participating.

“We have stuff you can put on quickly, as well as more complicated costumes that need makeup, and take more time,” said Joanne. “A costume doesn’t have to be complicated to be fun.”

 

Well-known clientele

The store has masks to paint, as well as the required brushes and paints. They also have ready-to-wear masks. The most popular costumes currently are pirates, super heroes, gangsters, flappers, 1950s poodle skirts and other items from that era, Mardi-Gras-themes, and the never-out-of-style clowns.

“Emmett Kelly was here just after we started,” Joanne said. (He was one of the most famous tragic clowns in the history of clowning, and worked for Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus during the 1950s). “That was quite an honor. We also had a visit from Svengooli a couple years ago.” (He’s the skeletal-faced haunt in the top hat who mixes horror with comedy and sarcasm on a Chicago late-night TV station.) “We’re trying to get him back for our 30th anniversary celebration next year.”

Others who buy costumes and special effects makeup from JJ Blinkers include kids who are making their own movies. This is a popular thing to do, perhaps inspired by cameras that are easier to work, and by movies like Spielberg’s “Super 8” and the much-loved “Goonies.” Joanne is figuring out a way to show the movies made by young local Hitchcock wannabees.

JJ Blinkers also recently started something unique in its history. During the middle of September, for the third year in a row, a special effects makeup demonstration was given by Deadgar Winter just in time for Halloween. He hosts “Deadgar’s Dark Coffin Classics” on Channel 14 in Kenosha and Milwaukee. He learned his craft at the hands of a master mask molder and special effects makeup artist from Universal Studios. Deadgar teaches students to achieve a horrible appearance for head, neck, and arms.

Customers enjoy coming to JJ Blinkers and trying on costumes, especially if they’ve been disappointed by ones they’ve bought via internet that have either been backordered (sometimes making them unavailable for an upcoming holiday), or that don’t fit. Satisfied people return to the shop, which makes Joanne and Kim very happy.

“Another cool thing happens here,” Joanne said. “We’ve had kids come in after we opened, and they were 12-13. Now they’re grown up, and they’re introducing their own kids to the store.”

 

All for fun

This place was obviously started by a person with a wacky sense of humor. And around every corner, there’s more to see. Joanne admits she’s drawn to movement and sound, hence the robotic ghouls.

“We like what we do, and we’ve gotten known all over the area for it,” she said.

Joanne and Kim are constantly bombarded by applications from people who want to work at the store. Some teenagers like the place so much that they’ve offered to work for free.

“We’re a family here,” Joanne said. Perhaps more like the Addams family than any other, a loosely related bunch held together by delight in the downright peculiar and the macabre. They are making a success of a unique and imaginative business. “We’re not a cookie cutter operation,” Kim said.

Definitely not.

This is the place for costumes, masks, special effects makeup, costumes, rubber chickens, magic kits, Whoopee Cushions costumes, feathered angel wings, balloons, Mardi Gras necklaces, costumes, feather boas, real-looking gravestones, and other essential items necessary for becoming someone or something else.

And JJ Blinkers sells costumes year-round. Find the store online at jjblinkers.com, or by phone at (847) 395-3770. But for the full experience you need to travel to Antioch, and check out the store in person.

And wear a costume.


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