Around the corner from my house the sequel to the hit movie Wonder Woman is being filmed. This is a bigger deal than you might think given that I live in Washington, D.C., which countless times (and appropriately) has been called Hollywood for ugly people. When celebrities come through town to promote their pet causes on Capitol Hill, it’s newsworthy, and you would be surprised how often jaded policy wonks turn into sycophantic fan-girls around even the hoariest reality TV star.
It’s no wonder, then, that sightings of Wonder Woman (the actress Gal Gadot) have been breathlessly reported on my neighborhood listserv, and nearby restaurants boast of serving her dinner. Gadot’s costars Kristen Wiig and Chris Pine have supposedly been spotted at the nearby organic taqueria. Neighborhood busybodies might bicker about parking restrictions and traffic disruptions from the shoot, but every last one of them would start grinning like an idiot if they happened to bump into one of the stars.
The movie, titled Magic Hour, is to be set in the 1980s (the last decade during which my neighborhood could be considered even remotely hip), and the producers have made the shoot as authentic as possible by re-creating some of the 1980s storefronts.
Which is how I found myself once again standing in front of the Commander Salamander store.
Founded by a flame-haired proprietress named Wendy Ezrailson in the 1970s, Commander Salamander was for a time the locus of the punk scene in Washington. Ezrailson hosted a party for Andy Warhol to celebrate the launch of Interview magazine, and celebrities like Cher were known to shop there when they were in town.
I was 11 years old and passing through Washington on my way to summer camp when I first stumbled into Commander Salamander. After a day and a half stuffed into an overheated van with my fellow campers, I wanted some time to myself, so I told the rest of my group I would meet them at the nearby public library in an hour. Wandering down Wisconsin Avenue looking for something to eat, I heard the unmistakable sound of the Dead Kennedys. It was coming from a shop whose cluttered windows and funky signage differed markedly from the bistros and boring clothing stores that dominated the rest of the block.
To a kid from Florida who attended a strict Christian fundamentalist school, walking into Commander Salamander was akin to entering an alternative universe. I tried not to look shocked by the “Satan is my homeboy” T-shirts and the vinyl bras and hot pink go-go boots. I attempted to act nonchalant while examining pins that said things like “Too fast to live. Too young to die.” I had only recently found one or two likeminded friends at school with whom I passed around like samizdat cassette tapes filled with alternative music. Meanwhile, the adults in my life still thought I listened to Amy Grant.
The young man and woman working that day had just the right amount of new wave insouciance to make me believe they were the coolest people I’d ever meet. She had lots of heavy black eyeliner and dyed purple hair and wore scuffed Doc Martens. I can’t remember what he looked like because I couldn’t stop staring at his Circle Jerks T-shirt and feeling a vague embarrassment. They were real-life versions of something I could only dream of becoming myself: They were punk.
I lost track of time as I looked at the weird hats and racks of jewelry, the dark glittery makeup and Manic Panic hair dye, the leopard print bags and endless rows of T-shirts. I wanted it all, and for the first time in my young life I understood what it meant to covet. Alas, the only thing I could afford was a small Commander Salamander pin—neon orange with the store logo and a smattering of little black salamanders—which I immediately pinned to my backpack. Within a year I had shaved off half my hair, thinking my asymmetrical style looked new wave when in fact I resembled a confused escapee from A Flock of Seagulls. I was sternly rebuked by school officials for my “unladylike” appearance.
Eventually I outgrew the weird hair and my punk phase (although I still own a pair of motorcycle boots reminiscent of that shopgirl’s Doc Martens). Commander Salamander closed in 2010, and the space it once occupied is now a bank.
I could only peer through the window of the re-created store, but what I saw—lots of bad track-lighting and aggressively primary colors—screamed 1980s. When it’s completed, the set will no doubt provide a suitable backdrop for the lissome Wonder Woman and her costars, but it will lack the edgy weirdness of the original. Perhaps that’s why seeing the Commander Salamander logo again after all these years prompted more melancholy than Manic Panic.
That’s the thing about nostalgia. Like an ill-considered haircut, it’s best experienced from a distance.
