Artifax, the 48-year-old head shop in a Northeast Philly rowhouse, is closing

Brent Brookstein was working at the Sam Goody music store in the Roosevelt Mall across from his family’s Northeast Philly rowhouse in 1976, spending his days strumming guitars, teaching kids how to play “Stairway to Heaven,” and wondering what to do with his life.

Then, one day, a colleague handed him a catalog of pipes and smoking paraphernalia that was mailed to the store. Brookstein thought about the eyeglass shop in the basement of his parents’ end-of-the-row house on Hanford Street near Cottman Avenue that was closing and was suddenly hit with a pipe dream: What if he turned that storefront into a head shop?

“They thought I was crazy and they tried to discourage me,” he said of his parents. “But I told them ‘I think I can do this,’ and I literally used money that I had saved up from my bar mitzvah to open the shop.”

On Nov. 18, 1976, Brookstein opened Artifax in the 600-square-foot space. That first day he sold two packs of E-Z Wider rolling papers for 35 cents each.

“And that was all I sold,” he said.

But things quickly picked up, and for a long time business was good, very good, two-vacation-houses-and-two-kids-sent-to-the-George-School good.

“Honestly, I never thought it would be as successful as it was,” Brookstein said. “No one believed I could do what I did in a store of this size, so they always thought there was something nefarious going on, but there really wasn’t.”

From being arrested to having a car go through his wall, Brookstein has seen a lot during his 48 years in business, including the legalization of marijuana in some states. Until relatively recently, customers couldn’t even say marijuana, bong, or weed in his store or he’d have to kick them out. Now, his employees teach senior citizens with medical marijuana cards how to use devices to consume their cannabis.

But legalization hasn’t been good for business, Brookstein said. Dispensaries undercut him on paraphernalia and every other gas station (and store on South Street) sells pipes now.

So after 48 years, Brookstein, 66, of Yardley, is retiring, closing Artifax, and selling the building.

“We’ve been here so long that we’ve literally sold to generations of the same family — grandparents, parents, and grandkids,” he said.

His longest-tenured employees, Mindy Flood, 65, of Jenkintown, who’s worked at the store for 41 years, and Larry Dresnin, 57, of Northeast Philly, who’s been there for 38, said Brookstein threatened to close for years, so when he finally made the call after a particularly bad January, it was a surprise.

“I’m going to have to grow up now, I guess,” Dresnin said.

Brookstein is waffling on a closing date (either the end of this week or the end of the first week of next month) and several times during our interview, he looked off, seemingly overtaken by emotion and nostalgia. Just because he’s decided to close his store doesn’t mean he’s taking it well.

“Did you ever make a decision and wonder if it was the right decision?” he asked.

When Brookstein opened, his store and Wonderland, the Rittenhouse Square store that closed in 2022, were the only two head shops in Philly. Business quickly boomed and caught the attention of a mounted police officer who patrolled Roosevelt Mall across the street.

“He caused a serious problem in that he would wait for people to come out of the store, go into their car, and then he would gallop up to them and arrest them,” Brookstein said. “This went on for a while and was very bad for business.”

The newly elected district attorney at the time, Ed Rendell, had a program where one night a week, people could come to his office for help with community issues. So Brookstein and his dad went to see him.

He said Rendell was sympathetic and told him to get the officer’s badge number and file a formal complaint.

“So one Saturday I was here and the police officer was hassling somebody so I walked out, being very naive, and I said, ‘Excuse me, officer, can I get your badge number?’ and I was immediately arrested for obstructing the law,” Brookstein said.

All charges were dropped and Brookstein said the city gave him a choice: Would he rather receive a financial settlement or a special license giving him permission to sell paraphernalia?

He chose the latter and became only the second store, after Wonderland, to get the license.

“They unintentionally gave us a monopoly, Wonderland and myself, by giving us this license that no one else could get,” Brookstein said.

The license worked well until the shop was raided by police in 2006. Brookstein said he sued the city, settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, and is prohibited from discussing the case.

In 2018, a driver fell asleep at the wheel and drove his car through Artifax while it was closed, knocking out one of the walls, but that didn’t stop the staff from going to work.

“We didn’t close at all, we put caution tape outside so people couldn’t come in and then we kind of ran stuff out to them,” Flood said.

The dedication Flood and Dresnin have to Artifax is palpable. They love this weird little corner of Philadelphia with glass pipes in the shape of hot dogs and aliens and Philly-sports-themed herb grinders and bowls (all now 50% off!). To them, it’s more than a head shop, it’s a place to get into a good headspace.

They’ve developed long-lasting relationships with customers who’ve given them everything from birthday cakes and Christmas cards to handmade guitar straps and hugs.

“It’s like we’re your local bartender,” Flood said. “They tell us a lot about what’s going on and you really get close with them ... and if they move away they always stop when they come back in town.”

Former staffers also stay in touch, and the crew gets together for breakfast every Christmas Eve.

“We built a special environment here,” Dresnin said. “We’ve developed a sense of family.”

Brookstein, they said, has been good to them, too, providing full benefits, including a pension.

Brookstein is proud he could share his success with his employees, but he hasn’t always been proud of telling others what he does for a living. He’ll never forget what a woman said to him at a party in the ‘80s when he told her about his business.

“She’s sipping her chardonnay and she looks at me and says, ‘So you’re nothing more than a subcontractor to a drug dealer,’” Brookstein said. “It made me feel very insecure.”

Brookstein, a married father of twins who are now 38, sent his daughters to the George School, a prestigious private Quaker school, on the money he made from Artifax, but he was still self-conscious when the other parents, many of whom were doctors and lawyers, asked about his career.

“It was very difficult for me to tell them,” he said. “However, my kids always told me that all the other kids thought they had the coolest dad.”

After posting about the store’s closing on social media earlier this month, and seeing customers call Artifax an “icon,” “an institution,” and “a legend on Cottman Avenue,” Brookstein said he’s now proud to know the business he started as a teen mattered to people.

“It kind of makes me feel good knowing that I created something that meant something to somebody else,” he said.

As customers called and stopped in last week to pay their respects (and to check out the 50% off discount storewide) many fondly recalled buying their first pipe at the store, or being thrown out by the staff.

“I’ve been coming in here since the ‘80s. I used to stop in on my way to Visions for the pudding wrestling,” said a customer in an Eagles sweatshirt, who gave his name only as Fred.

Flood laughed as the man walked out the door.

“I’ve said it for years, you never know what you’re going to get when you come in here,” she said.