6/16/25 UPDATE: This short history appeared in Issue 2 of The Coldest, which has since sold out. Two Tone’s famous catalog, as well as a 1986 article about the store, are also available on this site. Iggy passed away in May 2025. A friend of the zine visited him last year with a printout of this short history, so I’m grateful he was aware of it.

In the days before internet shopping was as easy as sitting down to watch TV, it might be challenging to find the clothes, accessories and music a punk or skinhead might want. You would have to actually leave your house and go to the mall. But what about before Hot Topic and Dr. Marten stores were everywhere? In between thrifting and picking stuff up at shows, you might have relied on a local independent shop or mailorder outfit directed towards the subcultures. Two Tone, opened in 1979 by Iggy Goleczynski and his wife Roma around Monroe Street and Central Avenue in Passaic, New Jersey, was such a place.

Iggy immigrated to New York from Chorzow, Poland with his family during the second major wave of Polish immigration to the United States in the late 1960s. Motivating this move was Iggy’s involvement in student protests against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia after the Prague Spring. Now in the US and in his early 20s, he spent the 1970s briefly attending college before dropping out in favor of the party life and counterculture that existed in the Greenwich Village neighborhood. At some point, Iggy met another Polish immigrant known as Roma, got married and settled in Passaic.

After punk rock and culture emerged out of New York and then subsequently the UK and then back to the US, a scene established itself in Passaic, revolving around the Capitol Theater and the Hitsville Club. Iggy and Roma saw an opportunity to start a store that catered to this subculture they also considered themselves a part of and went ahead with their plans, obtaining a loan from Roma’s mother. And so in 1979, Two Tone opened its doors.

Situated across the street from Capitol Theater in Passaic, Two Tone benefited from the popular venue. Capitol saw The Clash, The English Beat, The B-52s, Beastie Boys and Public Image Ltd play there, as well as more mainstream acts such as Bruce Springsteen and Prince. 

Capitol Theater wasn’t just any concert hall. Considered one of the best sounding venues with a capacity of around 6,000 by Billboard Magazine, it had a solid reputation. It’s in-house camera and sound equipment taped many shows and you can still track down the countless bootleg releases of live shows that happened here, as well as watch some of the shows on Youtube.

As Two Tone was close-by, concert attendees waiting in long lines would often stop in to browse and purchase items as they waited. And not just concert attendees, sometimes the actual performers would stop in, as seen in the Beastie Boys ‘License to Ill’ VHS from 1987. [1]

Also helping business was Hitsville, a club about half of a mile away at 505 Main Ave, which hosted lots of punk, goth and new wave acts such as the Misfits, Bauhaus, T.S.O.L., Black Flag and the Ramones during the 1980s.

The store quickly built itself up as a spot to stop at for the subcultures that existed around punk, new wave, oi! and ska music for those in New Jersey as well as New York City. At first, the store’s big moneymaker was secondhand clothes. Iggy & Roma would travel to NYC to thrift the sort of clothes that were more difficult to obtain in New Jersey or required a lot of searching. They would bring back to the store to sell at markup. As secondhand clothes fell out of favor in the subcultures, they focused more on brand new merchandise.

In the first half of the 1980s, business was quite good. Good enough for Iggy & Roma to buy a house in nearby Clifton. A second store was opened in 1985 in Montclair on Bloomfield Avenue. They even took their family and employees on trips to the UK and Caribbean.

In 1986, the Passaic store moved across the street, right next door to the Capitol Theater, further benefiting from its proximity to a music venue with regular high-profile shows.

Unfortunately, Two Tone encountered some difficulties during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Hitsville went out of business sometime around 1987. The Capitol Theater went into decline as larger venues such as the Meadowlands Sports Complex opened. It eventually closed in 1989 and was demolished in 1991, after a series of arsons.

Sometime around 1989, Roma was involved in a serious accident of some kind and had steep medical bills. The scene around Two Tone tried to help. A benefit show featuring almost a dozen bands was organized at the The Pipeline in Newark.

The Passaic store moved to a smaller location at 251 Main Avenue in 1990. Iggy and Roma divorced sometime around then, with Iggy keeping the Passaic store and Roma keeping the Montclair location. The latter eventually closed in 1992.

As the 1990s progressed, more and more of Two Tone’s business came from mailorder. Advertising in punk zines such as MaximumRockNRoll and sending out large photocopied catalogs of their inventory became the lifeline that kept the store open into the 2000s.

A catalog from 1999 reveals a surprising amount of inventory. Flight jackets, Fred Perry shirts, bondage pants, Ranger boots, miniskirts and studded belts are just some of the fashion they offered. Looking for music? Well, they had CDs from The Oppressed, Cock Sparrer, Discharge and Trojan Records. T-shirts? Infa-Riot, Sex Pistols, Crass and Madness were available. Patches & pins? Too many to mention. Posters & vinyl? Check. Books? They carried Spirit of 69, Skinhead Nation and The Two Tone Story.

These ads and their mailorder business are probably why most outside of New Jersey remember them.

A former customer from the 2000s told me “I’m pretty certain I discovered them in an ad in Maximum RockNRoll”. In trying to track down people who remembered Two Tone, most lived far from Passaic and their experience with the store stems from the MRR ads.

“I had a punk kid give me a catalog when I was in 9th grade. I ordered from them from 1998 to at least 2002. They had a bit of everything really. I got t-shirts, videos, wristbands, studs, CDs. I got my first derby from there. Seemed like really cool people from the few times I called them about an order.” said a punk rocker from South Carolina I spoke with.

Even with this mailorder lifeline, there was sacrifice. For a few years, Iggy lived in a cramped space in the store, unable to afford a house or apartment. When he was able to move out of the store into a small apartment, he still couldn’t afford his car’s insurance or to take his dogs to the vet.

The 2000s represent that last era of the Two Tone store. Although the mailorder business was enough to keep the lights on, this started to go into decline as the internet became more popular. Iggy tried to adapt. A website was established around 2003. At least a few fundraisers happened in the years after that. But despite these efforts, Two Tone eventually was no longer viable. It closed for good on August 31, 2008.

With this brief article, I could never hope to tell the whole story of Two Tone. With no direct experience with the store and a limited amount of source material that just isn’t possible. But I’m willing to bet that it played an important part in many people’s lives. As a meeting place, as part of a subcultural scene and as a connection to these subcultures for people all over the US…there are probably zines, music, life experiences, relationships and lifelong interests that wouldn’t have existed had Two Tone not been around. For that the store deserves some recognition and appreciation.

Footnotes

[1] Former employee Connie can be briefly spotted with Roma in the video. Connie later moved to Portland with her partner in the 1990s and opened up Another State of Mind, a shop similar to Two Tone that seems to still exist today.

Sources

Cowen, Richard. “Store Owners Sold on Mall.” The Record, March 14, 1990.

Deggans, Eric. “Iggy Goleczynski.” Asbury Park Press, June 25, 1995.

Deggans, Eric. “Skinheads: ‘Scourge of Nazis’.” The Home News, July 28, 1995.

Garcia, Ernie. “Punk Rock Is Music to Iggy’s Ears.” Herald News, May 22, 2001.

“Help Stop The Eviction On Iggy Of Two Tone Shop!” Black Flag Shoppe. July 7, 2008. https://blackflagshoppe.blogspot.com/2008/07/help-stop-eviction-on-iggy-of-two-tone.html.

“HISTORICAL OI!/PUNK ROCK SHOP ENDANGERED!!! WE NEED YOUR HELP!” Live Journal. November 21, 2003. https://thrifttrade.livejournal.com/27171.html.

“History.” Another State of Mind. September 1, 2017. http://www.anotherstateofmind.net/History.htm.

Keller, Karen. “Should I Stay or Should I Go now? Local Punk Icon Closes Up Shop.” Herald News, August 31, 2008.

Koenig, David. 2009. New York Hardcore 1986-1993: A Time We Will Remember. Unpublished.

Magdziak, Alice. “Shop Local, NJ! Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair.” You Don’t Know New Jersey. December 3, 2019. https://www.youdontknowjersey.com/2019/12/shop-local-nj-bloomfield-avenue-in-montclair/.

Moran, Thomas. “Requiem for Passaic Rock-and-roll Legend: Wrecking Ball May Claim Landmark Theater.” The Record, February 18, 1990.

PShabi. “Beastie Boys LTI VHS Clip,” July 6, 2006. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiNCdMnM0gA.

Stevens, Jean. “Last of the Big-time Punks: Passaic Shop Makes a Last Stand.” Herald News, February 10, 2008.

Two Tone Punksite. February 13, 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20070213192501/http://www.twotone.ws/.

Multiple Facebook conversations from January 2023-May 2023 with Eric Bratchny, Alicia Heather, Andy Skv, Napoléon Nikolai Živković, Richard Hertz, Mark Crecco, Chris Bassani, Louie Cypher, Patryk Boyle and Chris Friendly.