A House of Shadows: Remembering Starwind

This article is written not to be an authoritative source of information but instead to serve as inspiration for old Starwind customers to share their memories of the place. If you have photos please email them to me and I will append them to this article.

This late 1980s sticker features Starwind’s logo.

Once Upon A Silver Moon has settled into its new home at 3124 N Classen here in Oklahoma City, and we’ve started getting a lot of comments from our new customers along the lines of “Oh! This place reminds me of Starwind!”

This is a hugely flattering statement for us, especially since this is just the fifth month we’ve been open. I will humbly state that we are not anything like Starwind, but that I do hope that our store grows up to be something like it, and more.

What’s Starwind? you ask. To those who are not old enough to remember, or those who never visited, it is hard to understand the dreamy look on people’s faces when they recount their memories of the premiere Oklahoma City new age store that had its heyday in the late 1980s. It was legendary, and although it closed in the early 90s, Starwind’s legend lives on to the point that even though it’s been closed for 20 years it is still the benchmark against which all other new age stores in the area are compared.

That’s one hell of a legacy.

To prepare for the reboot of Once Upon A Silver Moon, I travelled across the United States checking out botanicas, candle shops, new age stores, witch shops, and metaphysical mercantiles in order to get a good look at what’s left of the fabulous stores, and to see what newer merchants have brought to the marketplace. There were quite a few worth noting in San Francisco and Oakland, and one in Las Vegas that really stood out, and another legendary store in Denver, but for the most part even I often found myself thinking, “well, this place is cool, but it’s no Starwind.”

I didn’t live in Oklahoma City during most of the time that Starwind was open, but I have relatives here and visited often, so I did get by a few times. Many of my trips to Starwind were coupled with (expensive) visits to Rainbow Records, located just a couple of blocks away at the corner of NW 23rd and Classen. I was suitably impressed by the new age experience and always enjoyed it. Had I known I’d eventually be a metaphysical shopkeeper myself, I would certainly have paid a lot more attention to my surroundings.

I moved to Oklahoma City in 1992, right before Starwind’s Classen location closed. I drove past the north one a few times but never managed to make it in. I wish now that I had done so, but I was a puppy clerk in a busy downtown law firm and had my nose to the grindstone until quite late most nights. (Some things just don’t change…)

As I understand the history, Starwind started out as a place called House of Shadows in downtown Oklahoma City in 1975, moving to 3015 N Classen in 1976. Joyce and John Autry, the owners, changed the name to Starwind in 1979. They had a major remodel in 1986 which got a lot of press at the time.

What did it look like inside? Well, to my memory (which could be totally wrong), the ceiling, floors, and walls were a grey-brown, and there was a jewelry-and-checkout counter like you see at the mall, where there are cases on all four sides, in the middle of the store. The cases were black and chrome, and I remember beds of black aquarium rock to display the pendants. Track lighting overhead really made the jewelry counter feel like a bright shiny island in the sea of comfortable darkness. You had to walk around the jewelry counters to get to the other parts of the store… probably intentionally designed that way. Clever!

Windchimes hung in a little alcove and they played recordings of thunderstorms and had a fan going to make the chimes ring softly. People tell me that this is one of the things they thought was pretty cool.

Were there readers? I can’t recall. I don’t remember a reader’s alcove, but I had not yet been gifted my first deck of tarot cards the last time I went by there. It’s so hard to think that there was ever a time I didn’t know how! I’ve been doing that for years.

One wall had all the music – records, tapes, and those newfangled CD things. On another wall was an antique apothecary with a zillion little drawers holding scented unguents and potions. On another wall was the, um… incense? and the fourth wall was the Classen side with the windows and doors. In the back was a second room, the infamous Back Room (say that in hushed tones) where they kept the magick books.

There were obelisk-shaped glass curio cabinets with sparkling crystal balls, kaleidescopes, stained glass boxes, pewter statuary, and mineral specimens. Racks of greeting cards and rows of ornate sculptures and other home-dec items. Fountains, candles, and a staircase that went nowhere, kind of like the Winchester House.

The place was Big. Big as in big impression, big deal, big business. But still, accessible. Easy on the eyes and soothing to the soul. They didn’t throw it in your face.

One could get lost in there for hours, trying to take it all in. The mysteries of what hidden treasures might be found if only one knew where to look. That, I believe, was what made such an impression that it clings today as a ghost in our minds. We didn’t know it then, but we were indeed walking through a house of shadows.

June of 1991, John and Joyce parted ways.

Joyce bought the land at 10603 N Pennsylvania Avenue on September 23, 1994. An ambitious construction project was begun, with a gift shop, a coffee shop, and a restaurant. Nobody has actually verbalized it, but I think the word you guys are looking for is pretentious.

Just a few months later, in May of 1995, she was in court for alleged breach of contract, and in debt for nearly a million dollars, if the public records are accurate. Oklahoma’s general economy was behind the national curve, but there isn’t enough evidence to suggest that the economy was in any way to blame for failure to thrive.

January 22, 1997 a quit claim deed was processed, returning the property to the bank.

Meanwhile, the old storefront on Classen sat vacant most of the time, festering with water damage, occasionally occupied by pool halls, fish markets, and vagabonds. Sixteen years after Starwind closed, on New Year’s 2011, a fire destroyed the building, and that was the end of a legend.

Sometimes people tell me that they just didn’t like the new location, and that the feeling of the business really changed once they moved “all the way up north”. I once asked Joyce why she chose that location and she said that it was because many of her customers’ zip codes fell in that area. It was a good idea – if you have to choose a new location, the best you can do is to make an educated guess. But that area was heavy with new apartment complexes, which did not tend to house the kind of folks who could support the budget of the new store.

*sigh* I am familiar with that mistake… misjudged that exact same demographic, overestimated their support. I didn’t have as much riding on the line as Joyce but it certainly led to the seven-year gap between locations. It taught me a very clear lesson.

I do not seek to reinvent Starwind. While I could do worse than to follow in Joyce’s footsteps, Once Upon A Silver Moon is its own thing. I’m really proud of where we’ve gotten and hope to continue healthy growth for many years to come. That said… if we ever start getting too big for our britches, I sincerely hope that someone slaps me upside the head. Just whisper “Love’s Country Store” in my ear. We’ll straighten right up.

I would like to bring back those good Starwind experiences, someday maybe even become a legend myself, but we’re striving for something more. We want to touch as many people in a meaningful way as we possibly can, reach past our self-infatuation and the vision we have for our future to be in the moment with our customers. It doesn’t matter how great our store is if we turn our back to even one person when they ask us for help. Spiritual service is what I’m talking about.

The rootwork, for starters. I have never heard anyone say that Starwind did any spellwork for its customers. We also have a good ethnic mix of customers, reaching out to southern Blacks who know about hoodoo, and to Latinos who are used to the workings of a botánica. My personal background is fraught with dusty apothecaries, learning herbal healing and magick at an early age, and rootwork is something I don’t think any other store in Oklahoma even offers.

Starwind’s patrons were predominantly white middle-class Baby Boomers who might have had hippie leanings when they were young. For many years, that was simply the “new age” demographic. It was what it was, no more and no less. While we do love our Red Cup hipsters and ex-hippie Boomers, we serve a much wider group of folks, cranky Gen-Xers such as myself included.

We also make a lot of our wares and I do not remember hearing about handmade goods being a specialty at Starwind.They probably had some, but it wasn’t a handmade shop like ours. I am very picky about who gets to show at the store. The energy has to be right, and the artist has to have the integrity to follow through if a patron needs help with a purchase after it leaves the ‘Moon.

And we are proud of our Pride customers, too – a demographic that would simply not have been discussed nor catered to in the Starwind era, despite the swinging 80s. Sure, there were gays who worked at Starwind – you just didn’t talk about it or put Pride stuff out on the shelves. Rainbows were just rainbows back then. I am fortunate to live in a different time so we can honor the diversity of our customers.

So this post is here for you to share your memories in the comments. If there are corrections I will adjust the article to reflect them. I would especially love to know what brands, or fragrances, or music, or special things you liked to get from Starwind, so that I can maybe try to bring those lines into my shop – but also I just want to know about colors, lighting, layout, ambiance, and your experiences. Fill us in, dear readers, and let this page serve as a tribute to a most memorable shop that filled so many people with wonder and joy.