Blue Nile

Profile

Feeling grimy and gritty and in need of a lift? Whether cosmetic or herbaceous, many of your needs can be met at this odd hybrid of beauty supply and head shop. Shop for European soaps, home fragrance, incense, and candles, along with glass bongs, pipes, and fancy lighters. The beauty products are lined up neatly on open, accessible shelves, while the Zippos and smoking paraphernalia are housed behind glass doors and closed cases. The contrasting inventory makes for a strange shopping experience, but where else can you pick up a nice cigar—also showcased behind glass—along with a scented body lotion to mask the stogie's stench? As many of the older head shops and junky T-shirt stands along this once-seedy block give way to elegant boutiques and restaurants, Blue Nile stands at the scented, smoke-hazed crossroads between the neighborhood's dreamy past and urgent, emergent present. — Marisa Lowenstein