Capital Hippie is colorful, hard to ignore in a changing downtown

By MIKE ELLIS

You’d expect to find a tie-dye shop in Old Town, REO Town or East Lansing.

But downtown Lansing?

Laura Castle has been running the downtown shop Capital Hippie for almost four years, plus six months beforehand at the also-downtown Middle Village Market.

“I must just love to struggle,” she said, “because I would make more money in REO Town, I’d make way more money in Old Town, and forget about East Lansing. It could even be like a winter business, open two days a week.”

But downtown is changing.

The city’s first skyscraper in nearly a century could open as soon as 2027, with hundreds of apartments. There’s also a new City Hall and plans to turn the current City Hall into a hotel, along with new housing and the Ovation music venue.

Lots of potential customers.

Castle reopened her shop on Saturday (Jan. 24). She was closed all of January, except for one day.

A small business owner, she said she normally takes off three weeks in January to recharge.

“Well, I guess it was two weeks last year and only a week the year before that, so next year, it may be a month,” she said, laughing.

The Peanut Shop and Weston’s Kewpee Sandwich Shoppe, some of Capital Hippie’s neighbors, have been in business on Washington Square for a combined total of 180 years, give or take.

But after fewer than a handful of years downtown, newcomer Capital Hippie has already become a colorful and hard-to-ignore institution.

Castle organizes downtown events, including Scare on the Square and craft shows, and she’s started recruiting food trucks on weekends when many restaurants are closed.

She doesn’t like the one-color, somewhat subtle tie dye that people — including her husband and her best friend, one of the first female NBA referees — sometimes ask for.

“I’ll do it,” Castle said, “but every time, I’m like, ‘You’re just killing my soul.’”

That’s how she approaches her business. Like tie dye, full of soul and color. Hard to ignore.

***

Being closed a couple of weeks in January isn’t usually a problem, Castle said, because she makes her comeback into an event.

But this time, she pulled back.

“I didn’t want to pump this up and get snowed out,” she said.

It was about 11 degrees outside on Saturday. People were worried about the unhoused. A customer came in around noon with news of the second fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis. Another dropped off 3D-printed whistles — the size and shape of a small USB drive and the color of an orange LEGO separator — that people can use if they spot the feds in Lansing.

Business was slow, aside from some of the Capital Hippie’s colorful regulars.

Castle said she didn’t advertise the reopening and didn’t push it much on her social media page, which is a huge driver of her business.

Selling tie dye is a hustle.

Selling it on one of the coldest days of the decade, in a city that isn’t exactly full of life on the weekends?

That’s hard mode.

Castle has started to carve out a new niche: social media videos.

“First of all,” she said, “I wouldn’t have social media if I didn’t have a business. It’s horrible. But I sell stuff online and legitimately make money off of it.”

She said she mimics TikTok videos she likes, adding a tie-dye twist (or spiral) or highlighting downtown businesses.

She came into work one day about six months ago and just started creating the video skits. But they’re bringing in people who are curious. And they’re buying.

Sometimes, “one days” like that can have ripple effects, spreading out like colors and bleeding into something else — something unpredictable, something different.

Something tie dye, something social media, something tangible in downtown Lansing.

It all started one day, too, about six years ago. Castle couldn’t find an extra-large tie-dye shirt, so she figured out how to make it.

Tie dye isn’t that complicated. YouTube is her university.

There are tons of ways to make a tie dye. It can be a shirt, a macramé chandelier, a shower curtain, whatever.

She started with a shirt and a large, white, plastic tub in her basement.

“First, I’ll tie it up, then I’ll wash it, then I do a coat of soda ash, then spin it, then dye,” she said.

She does a lot of ice dye, meaning she bundles up the shirt, or whatever, and submerges it into a small container filled with ice.

She’s using a heater in the supercold. The quicker the ice melts, the more vibrant the color.

Castle recently filmed herself making “fuck ICE” tie dyes with the ice dye method.

Tie it.

Wash it.

Coat it in ash.

Spin it.

Dye it.

Rinse, untie, wash.

She uses squirt bottles filled with colored liquid to spell out “fuck ICE” on the spiraled shirt.

Unfolded, you can’t tell. It looks like a typical colorful, hippie-era, Grateful Dead-esque swirl.

She said she made a handful of the iced ICE shirts. She laughed because since you can’t tell what they say, she could just tell unsuspecting customers that’s how the shirts were made.

Castle isn’t afraid to get political on her social media as well.

“I don’t want to be in people’s faces or whatever,” she said. “I just want to let people know where I stand. I come from a small town (Clio) that’s very conservative — I think, at least — so I want to let other women know that they’re not alone having a liberal mentality in a conservative town.”

Soon after President Donald Trump told a reporter to “quiet, piggy” in November, people took the same taunts to Capital Hippie’s social media pages.

“There were a few AI piggies that they posted, too, but they were in tie dye,” Castle said. “They were all rainbow, and I was like, I’m not offended by this. I don’t mind that. I’ll take the rainbow tie-dye piggies.”

***

One of Castle’s regulars, who didn’t want to use his name, swooned around the store on Saturday, sporting a flashy fake-diamond chain over a shiny, puffy black jacket and dancing to the music in the middle of the shop.

After vibing for a bit, he saddled up to the counter and asked me, “What is a hippie?”

He then said being a hippie is love, energy and peace.

“Living life differently. Love is for everybody. Be you, man.”

Hard to argue with that.

So, I nodded.

I asked Castle a few minutes later what “hippie” means to her.

She took a deep breath.

“I almost wish I didn’t even have that name,” she said.

“To me, a hippie is … don’t get me wrong, I’ve fist-fought men, I’m not just peace and love, so sometimes I guess you’ve got to punch a motherfucker in the face to get peace.”

She said the name “Capital Hippie” was a safety pick. In case she moved away from tie dye, it would cover all kinds of stuff.

“I think a hippie is someone who does a lot of peace and equality and who fights for rights for other people. I know a lot of people who claim to be hippies and they’re pieces of shit, so, like I said, there are definitely times where I’m like, ‘Why did I choose this name?’ But I do think it’s perfect. We’re in the capital, right across from the Capitol.”

Castle doesn’t like traditional “hippie” tie dye as much as she likes reverse tie dye — think Dungeons & Dragons or Stranger Things.

That’s part of Capital Hippie’s attraction for Colton Hughes, who recently opened a downtown gaming space, Dungeons & Flagons, and has owned the adjacent Element Massage parlor for nearly a decade.

“We’re celebrating our 10-year anniversary on March 12,” Hughes said.

He stopped by Capital Hippie Saturday afternoon wearing a showstopping knee-length, astrological print coat.

He said he used to hate tie-dye, the traditional swirl. The kind you did in the backyard with little squirt bottles, rubber bands and primary colors.

It just wasn’t his style.

He pointed instead to a shirt behind the counter: black with green flame-looking wriggles swooshing around.

“That’s the reverse kind,” Castle said.

Hughes said he owns eight, nine, maybe 10 Capital Hippie tie dyes, not counting accessories like scarves.

“There’s a reverse black sweater,” he said. “It’s my favorite.

He said he admires the work Castle has been doing downtown and that she’s been a positive force in the neighborhood, even when she tries to shy from the recognition she deserves.

***

Capital Hippie has been open just a few years, but the shop has already become a role model for other downtown businesses.

Siso Gadi, a designer, entrepreneur and producer who works downtown and runs LANARTBUS, is a regular at Capital Hippie and started singing Castle’s praises to her face on Saturday.

Castle tried to deflect him, but he persisted. She eventually relented, letting him go on.

“My argument is that business owners are the best placemakers,” Gadi said. “It comes naturally to business owners and to her. When I bring it up, she wants to shoot it down as something she does because it’s so obvious to her. Why would someone point out someone doing placemaking?”

Placemaking, according to Gadi, is the act of making downtown Lansing a destination, a desirable place to be. It’s the bubbles that come out of Sylvia’s Sudsery and the community outreach from Strange Matter, for starters, he said.

“Say whatever you want about my neighborhood, but come to the neighborhood and see the businesses,” he said. “There are great people running businesses here.”

Coming fresh from a data center forum downtown, Kim Peters wandered around the store Saturday, coming up to the counter to buy a macramé-like garment.

Peters and Castle settled on calling it a “poncho/shawl kind of thing,” dyed in blues and magentas, with some pinks and other colors throughout.

Peters couldn’t help but show it off, putting it on top of her jewel-green puffy jacket and giving a twirl.

She asked Castle about the next item she wants to buy: a purple shower curtain, like the one that used to hang in the front window.

Castle said it’s on her to-do list. She loves purple, too.

After a bit of back and forth, Castle asked Peters if they knew each other.

“Only online,” Peters said.

“Oh, you’re Kim Peters,” Castle said, recognizing one of her online fans. “Thank you so much for all your support. You just liked my story, I think, yesterday. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome,” Peters replied, walking out into the cold. “You deserve it.”