There’s a brand-new stationery and gift store in Uptown Kingston, and it’s got a special mission. “We hope to be a safe space for queer and trans people of all ages,” says Chess Needham, who, with his partner Ashley Molesso, opened the Everywhere Shop on North Front Street with a little party last Friday evening. “We want to be a place where people can see themselves through art.”
Like the couple’s risograph printing business founded in 2020, Everywhere Press, the store’s name is intended to convey the core message that “Queer and trans people are everywhere.” Besides the greeting cards, posters, stickers, notepads and tee-shirts that Needham and Molesso create and sell under the label Ash + Chess, the new shop – their first brick-and-mortar retail outlet – also carries a wide array of charming items sourced from LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, AAPI, Latinx and local makers.
If this description makes the Everywhere Shop sound a little like social responsibility reeducation camp – someplace you go because it’s good for you, or because you owe it to your LGBTQIA+ friends as a straight ally to buy their birthday presents from a gay-friendly business – think again. This store is simply unadulterated fun, popping with color and cheerful, welcoming vibes, whoever and whatever you are. Definitely bring the kids if you’ve got any!
The racks and counters are loaded with adorable gifts ranging from bumper stickers, keyrings, puzzles, chocolates and candles to markers, hairclips, washi paper and animal-shaped ceramic salt-and-pepper shaker sets. Most items are small enough to stuff in a stocking, so the timing of the opening is perfect for holiday shopping.
The greeting cards that are Ash + Chess’s specialty cover an entire wall, with messages that suit every imaginable occasion. Some are blatantly political or specific to the LGBTQIA+ community; others are more generic, celebrating birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, births, deaths, graduations, friendship, new jobs, housewarmings – the usual occasions for sending a card. All are eyecatching, quirky and clever, with a signature graphic style that often evokes the counterculture black-light posters of the late ‘60s, though the colors are slightly more subdued. (This correspondent’s favorite card carried the message, “Hope your new home isn’t haunted.”)
Ash + Chess has been in the wholesale stationery business since 2017, two years after Molesso and Needham first got together in Brooklyn via a lesbian dating app called Her. Molesso is an Arkansas native who studied textile design at the Fashion Institute of Technology and was freelancing as a designer of bed linens and wallpaper; Needham, from New Jersey originally, attended NYU and was working as a Special Ed teacher when they met. They didn’t give up their day jobs right away when they launched Ash + Chess; according to Molesso, “The online business didn’t pick up until about three years in.” But now they supply their wares to somewhere between 800 and 1,000 retailers in 39 states (including Cocoon in New Paltz and Fiberflame in Saugerties), in Canada, the UK and Japan.
In 2019, the couple relocated both home and business from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. “We stayed there all through COVID, and were able to build the business, to build community,” Molesso relates. “In Richmond we got a taste of a slower life.” Beginning in 2020, they expanded their line of printed products to include a series of books geared to the needs of their LGBTQIA+ clientele, beginning with The Gay Agenda: A Modern Queer History & Handbook. Other titles already in print (and available at the Everywhere Shop) include Queer Tarot: An Inclusive Deck and Guidebook, My Queer Year Guided Journal and ABC-Deconstructing Gender. Forthcoming are The Big Book of Queer Stickers and Just Like My Family.
The pair had considered Kingston as a place to live and open a retail outlet for some time, though Molesso had to get over an aversion to cold weather first, she says. “In January 2022 we had the idea of moving. Then in May we came up to visit friends, with the mindset of ‘Could we live here?’” Finally, early in 2023, they moved to Hurley and found the Front Street location. They signed the lease in September and began renovating, building most of the furnishings by hand. “We’ve been conceptualizing it since February,” says Molesso.
The storefront is located at 44 North Front Street, in a space that was once an extra dining room of Stella’s Italian Restaurant but had been left vacant for years. “It was totally wild when we got the keys. The place was painted dark maroon and dark green, with hardly any lighting. The floors hadn’t been touched in 50 years, so we had to sand them.”
The transformation into a bright, lighthearted, fun space to shop has been remarkable. They kept the original mauve color of the vintage pressed-tin ceiling tiles, but painted every other surface in shades of orange and lilac with aqua accents. Entering the shop feels a bit like walking into the animated Yellow Submarine movie. You can’t help but feel your spirits lift.
Needham and Molesso’s highly successful wholesale mail-order business will continue, with a space set aside in the former Artie’s Bar & Grill next door to the Everywhere Shop for their office, packing and shipping. The shop itself is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. To learn more, visit their website at https://everywhere-shop.com or everywhere.shop on Instagram.
Join the family! 
