Sunnyside Sound Project

THE SUNNYSIDE SOUND PROJECT

Juile Wu has been a tailor in Sunnyside for more than 30 years.

Her store still has the original sign with the name of the previous owners.

JULIE WU:
"It's like my home"

When Julie Wu isn’t hemming pants, making curtains, tapering skirts, exchanging zippers or accepting clothes for dry cleaning, she has coffee and chats with her husband and the friends who come to visit her. “I’m still working because I love my store. I love Sunnyside. It’s like family,” says Julie, a Taiwanese immigrant who has worked as a tailor in Sunnyside since 1979. Although she spends 13 hours a day in her store on 43rd Avenue, often seven days a week, work rarely feels like work. “It's like my home,” she says matter-of-factly. “People say, ‘You must be tired!’ But I feel so happy every day.”

To her customers, many of the challenges Julie faces are invisible. She is currently experiencing her toughest time yet. While costs associated with the store have risen—the rent, for example, has increased from $250 to over $1,600—her alteration fees have remained almost the same.

But not even the robber who once ordered her to empty the cash register was able to foul her spirit. “You know,” Julie chided the young man, “I work very hard for my money.” Remembering the incident, she laughs. “So he dropped the quarters and left.”

Shortly after her arrival in New York Julie started out as an apprentice at Band’s Cleaners, named after the Jewish couple who then owned the business. She didn’t even know how to sew a button and still vividly remembers the first time she hemmed a pair of pants and almost stitched two of her fingers together. Yet after two months, Julie convinced the owners to sell her the store for $2,000.

Initially Julie had a lot of older Jewish customers who asked her to take in or let out their worn clothes as they gained or lost weight. Her new immigrant customers, on the other hand, may ask her to hem three pairs of brand new jeans at once.

Before Julie came to New York, she lived with her sister in Spain for four years and is fluent in Spanish. “When I left Spain, I didn’t know I had such a treasure in my life,” she says, adding her Latin American customers sometimes laugh at her Spanish because her accent—European Spanish mixed with a Taiwanese accent. But overall they appreciate to be able to convey to her the alterations they wish her to perform in their native tongue.

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