The area’s punk and alt-rock community lost one of its biggest champions Feb. 6, when cancer claimed Mimi Reilly, 57, the longtime owner of Star Booty Hair Salon.
“Mimi was always your champion, in your corner, your biggest fan,” friend Kelly Lessem wrote in a Facebook tribute. “Most important she shared her spirit with our community.”
Said Daddy Kool Records proprietor Manny Kool: “I think what set her apart from everybody else was that she provided that space for the outcasts and the misfits, where they would be invited and welcomed, and allowed to be themselves.
“So many kids would hang out at the shop. It was kind of a safe space, before safe spaces. A lot of kids were troubled, and she helped them out in so many ways.”
Born in New York and raised in Trenton, New Jersey, Mignonne Jeannette Reilly was a teenager when her family relocated to west central Florida. She was a graduate of St. Petersburg High School and opened the first iteration of Star Booty in 1996, after she graduated from cosmetology school.
Located near the State Theatre and Daddy Kool, Star Booty was in the heart of Central Avenue’s 600 block – the epicenter of the downtown music scene – for 18 years. There were art lofts, music clubs, instrument supply stores and hip bars along the strip. Rising rents drove out one small business tenant after another; in 2017 the hair salon moved out, first to a storefront on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr St N. and ultimately to 1741 16th St S., where it’s still in business today.
Reilly’s specialty was “rock ‘n’ roll cuts and color.” When the salon was on Central, she often cut, styled and colored hair for visiting musicians in town to perform at the State Theatre and Jannus Live.
“Star Booty was a destination for artists and musicians from all over the world,” remembered longtime friend Margaret Murray, CEO of Creative Pinellas. “Not just locally. I used to get my hair cut there, and more often than not there was a famous musician either walking in the door or walking out the door with a brand-new haircut.
“It was a glorious time,” Murray said. “And she’s going to be missed.”
Memorial service information has not yet been made available.
Hooray! I finally have a haircut that doesn’t suck! And suddenly, my career prospects, grad school, romantic troubles, and overall outlook on life is improved. After a disastrous haircut that left me (and a couple sympathetic stylists) in tears, 10 months later that mess had finally grown out but now I was shear shy. And broke. So I turned to friends on social media to include Yelp for suggestions, and that led me to Star Booty. First of all, the place reminds me of home the moment I walk in and as an aging hipster, I think Mimi and I are cut from the same alt punk indie rock cloth. We talked hair, music, dogs, dogs but in the end, I got exactly what I asked for, thank baby jeebus.
Yelp! Online review, 2017
Lola S./St Petersburg
