The ‘Salvador Dalí’ of Woodland Avenue is folding up Smiles Linens after 50 years

Stepping behind the checkout counter at Smiles Linens in Southwest Philly is like an archaeological expedition into the retail industry.

Bruce Zeiger, proud owner of the oldest business on Woodland Avenue’s retail corridor, has a 1970s phone with a cord, a working fax machine, a Rolodex (“to keep the fax machine company”), layaway tickets, and a well-coiffed handlebar mustache that’s been going strong for 25 years.

But the most oldfangled thing about his shop just might be the spool of string behind the desk he’s sat at for five decades.

You see, Zeiger’s been in the linen business so long he’s had customers come in for curtains who are armed not with exact measurements of their windows, but, rather, with their old curtains, a shoestring that’s about the size of their curtain, a notch on the back of their belt, or even a telephone cord that’s the approximate length of the curtain they need.

“And we make it work,” he said.

The aforementioned spool of string is for customers who don’t have anything at home to measure their windows. Zeiger cuts a long piece of it off and tells them to pull it across their window and mark where the edges are on the string with a black marker. Then, they bring the string back in, he measures it, and tells them what they need.

“You’re not gonna get that anywhere else,” Zeiger said. “There’s no app for that.”

Soon, Philadelphians won’t be able to get it at Smiles either.

Zeiger, 73, is folding up his linen store between July 10 and 15 (depending on inventory), selling the building, and retiring.

When Tracey Sweeting — who’s shopped at Smiles since moving to Southwest Philly 33 years ago — brought a friend in last week to buy a tablecloth and saw the closing signs, she ran to Zeiger for a hug and began to cry.

“Oh no! Oh God! You’re actually leaving? You’ve been here so long. I brought eons of people here,” she said. “It’s the best store in the neighborhood. There’s no other store like it. Nothing compares because it has everything and it’s so reasonable.”

Then, she moved on to Zeiger himself.

“He’s a beautiful, gentle creature,” she said. “By the time you’ve left you’re smiling and laughing. You’re like, ‘Oh God, well you made my day. I’m going out and I’m having a ball.’”

Sweeting promised to bring Zeiger a cake before the store closes.

“People all gonna be screaming, ‘Come back!’” she said.

The son and grandson of German immigrants, Zeiger said he was born with retail “in my blood.” As a kid growing up in Northeast Philly, he used to go door-to-door selling homemade pot holders.

“I can best describe myself like a racehorse. I was bred for this,” he said. “My grandfather, grandmother, and father were all in retail.”

Zeiger’s family owned several businesses on Woodland Avenue, including a dress shop, a bridal shop, and a women’s clothing store.

“This area has always been a neighborhood of immigrants, whether it was the Jews or the Irish or the Italians, and now it’s the Africans,” he said. “It’s always been that melting pot.”

Zeiger wasn’t pressured into the family business, but when the bridal shop began faltering in 1970, he offered to come on board while attending Temple University. He was able to turn it around.

Once while traveling to New York City for the bridal shop, as Zeiger and his father were crossing 34th Street, they saw a bunch of women gathered outside of a linen store.

Having recently acquired an old shoe store on Woodland Avenue, Zeiger and his father were inspired.

“It didn’t look like a complicated business and my father said ‘If it doesn’t work, your mother-in-law and your wife will have linens for the rest of their lives,” he recalled.

Smiles Linens opened on Woodland Avenue in 1975 and three years later, moved to its current location, an old John’s Bargain Store at 6129 Woodland Avenue. Eventually, the other family businesses closed but Smiles Linens remained (the name was Zeiger’s father’s idea).

When Zeiger opened Smiles, there were at least six other independent linen stores in Philly. Today, he knows of just one.

“Everything has changed in retail. It’s the internet. It’s the big box stores,” he said. “This is a specialized business.”

For the uninitiated, a linen store sells “soft goods for the home,” and not just those made of linen.

Among the remaining inventory at Smiles last week were sheets, kitchen mats, bath mats, towels, curtains, blinds, mattress covers, pillows, table runners, table cloths, vinyl tablecloth protectors, place mats, toilet seat covers, and doilies. So many doilies.

There was also an epic selection of fuzzy king-size blankets featuring images of jaguars, wolves, lions, and tigers and a lovely collection of Black angel figurines.

Though not typically found at a linen store, Zeiger said he’s often stocked Black dolls and figurines, which were especially popular before the internet, when he said his shop was one of the few places you could find them.

In the last few decades, many African immigrants have made Southwest Philly their home and opened businesses along Woodland Avenue. Recently, the area was rebranded as Africatown.

Zeiger, who headed the Woodland Business Association for 20 years, said one of his favorite parts of being a longtime store owner on the avenue is helping new immigrants with their businesses.

At one point, Zeiger owned 11 properties on the street, many of which he rented to immigrants, and he earned the nickname the “Mayor of Woodland Avenue” because of the help he offered others.

“There’s a gentleman who rented a store from me and the first year he and his brother were here, at Christmastime, I went in there and said, ‘I want to teach you something about America,’” Zeiger recalled. “He’s Black. I’m white. He’s Muslim. I’m Jewish. I’m old. He’s young. And I walked in with a box of candy and said ‘Only in America does a Jew bring a Muslim a box of candy for Christmas.’”

The two became fast friends and when the man had nobody to go with him to his naturalization ceremony, Zeiger did.

“I said to him, ‘I’m going to see my grandmother through your eyes,’” Zeiger said. “I took pictures, my wife framed them, and we’ve remained friends. He’s my brother.”

Two doors down from Smiles, Harouna Sall, a native of Senegal who runs the Baidy Discount Store, said while he’s upset Zeiger is retiring, he has no doubt they’ll remain in touch.

“That’s my brother. He give me good advice about running a business on the avenue. It’s his avenue,” Sall said. “You think you can find a better man than him? You don’t see his mustache going up?”

Zeiger’s mustache is his signature piece of flair. He’s had it for a long time but only began forming it into a handlebar in 2000.

“For Y2K, I decided to go back a century when everybody was going forward and it’s stuck,” he said.

His facial follicle splendor earned him nicknames like “The Pussycat Man,” “Captain Hook,” and “Salvador Dalí,” from customers, and he owns it. He put a giant smiley face with a handlebar mustache on his store bags and once wore one of those bags when he went as a layaway for Halloween (the last Smiles layaway was picked up just two weeks ago).

Now, it’s time for Zeiger to bag up his store. Over the last few years, the delivery pallets have gotten heavier, and his three children, six grandchildren, and wife of 52 years, his Washington High School sweetheart, Barbara, have urged him to retire.

He’s not sure what he’ll do with his free time yet, maybe some woodworking or traveling (“We’ll probably stop at every linen shop in Europe,” his wife said).

But Zeiger knows what he’ll miss most about running a business on Woodland Avenue — the people.

“The faces change. The color may change. The religion may change, but these are hardworking people. They stumble and fall and pick themselves up and keep on working,” he said. “I’ve shared some of my culture with them and they’ve shared some of theirs with me. It’s been a pleasure. It’s been a great thing.”