Cheap Trick returned home, playing a concert in 1979 at the fairgrounds outside Rockford.
Brenda McMahon, 18, was there with friends. She bumped into Mick Levin, 19, who was working as a stagehand. They've known each other since their not-so-long days at Oak Park and River Forest High School.
“I admitted that I had been crazy about her since high school,” Levine said. “And she was a little drunk and said she was attracted to me. And I wanted to fall to my knees and thank the stars above me.
He took her from the show to go thrift shopping at the Salvation Army.
“We saw a cool leopard-skin lamp, and it turns out we were listening to a lot of the same music and burlesque stuff,” Levine said. “We were both Cramps fans and punk rock fans, which at the time were the dirty secrets of the world, but the underground scene was great. From that point on, we became pretty much inseparable.”
In 1982, the couple decided that college wasn't for them, so they opened a vintage clothing store called Radio inside the Metro Music Venue at 3740 N. Clark Street near Wrigley Field. The venue, which had vintage radios everywhere and was open during nightclub hours – around 8pm to 4am – became a gathering place for punk rockers and the rockabilly crowd.
“We were both young rockers who were really fascinated by fashion,” Levine said. “She was the backbone that kept it together, and I was like Mr. Jabbermouth the social butterfly.”
They closed the store after a few years due to problems with the lease and opened a new store in the late 1980s at 3406 N. Halsted St. Called Ninety Ninth Floor, it offers an eclectic collection that includes classic sharkskin suits, chain bikinis, and Doc Martens. Boots, motorcycle boots, body piercing jewelry, high heel pumps, corsets, Jughead hats, latex dresses and other fetish clothing.
“It was the kind of thing that most places would be afraid to touch,” Levine said.
The pair attracted loyal shoppers from a cross-section of Chicago, from shy strippers to punks and club kids, as well as a few celebrities, including Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, Slash of Guns N' Roses and Bull's Dennis Rodman.
Initially, the couple lived in a space behind the store before moving to an apartment above it. It is where Ms McMahon died on October 11 from complications of multiple sclerosis. She was 63 years old.
“She was very soft-spoken and very compassionate,” Levin said. “There was no creature she could not care for and take care of. And she was not judgmental. She was very welcoming, not overly talkative like me, but rather very generous and very down to earth. But she was no Krempov. If she had to be a scraper, she could be But she always said, 'Choose your battles wisely.'
One such occasion came while she was waiting in line to see her favorite band, The Cramps. A woman was cut off in front of her. A fight ensued.
Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, the husband-and-wife duo at the heart of Cramps, shopped at the couple's store. Interior purchased Bettie Page's latex knee-high boots. Ivy bought shorts that had flames sewn on the groin area and spread to the hip.
On the 99th floor, Brenda McMahon was running her business on Halsted Street with Mick Levin.
Ms. McMahon's style leaned toward the Gothic, while Levin leaned toward what he called “gravedigger chic.” She delighted in a bag full of black clothes she found for sale on Maxwell Street from a vendor who told her his Italian grandmother had worn the clothes while mourning.
Ms. McMahon and Levine didn't believe in marriage but appreciated the protection it offered, so they held a simple wedding at City Hall in 2004.
Their store became a second home for Julia Garsenstein when she was a teenager who left home.
“Brenda and Mickey took care of me,” said Garsenstein, who later worked at the store. “I was like a surrogate family member.”
The store closed in 2015, and the couple transitioned the business online, including selling on Etsy under the name Atomicfireball.
Ms. McMahon was born in 1961 in La Rochelle, France, to Beatrix O'Donnell and Tom McMahon. Her father was in the army at the time. When the family later settled in Oak Park, he worked as a merchant and she was an elderly caregiver.
“Brenda was kind and beautiful, and she was meant to be,” Levin said. “Mundane, mundane things were fun as long as they were with her. To hear her laugh and tell me she loved me—the most wonderful things I had ever heard.
A memorial service is being held.
