The Marathon Clothing store No. 2 is scheduled to open in Los Angeles this year, a longtime dream of Nipsey Hussle.
His older brother, Samiel Asghedom, announced that the family has purchased a property in the Melrose arts district in Los Angeles and will open a new Marathon store there.
“This second location is a dream that Nipsey always had, and it’s important that his kids can see his plans fulfilled,” Asghedom told The Guardian.
Although the original store at Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue has closed, fans can still pay tribute at the site, he said.
In the future, the family will transform a commercial lot that it owns into a space that offers free music lessons for youth, inspired by a program Hussle took part in as a child.
While the Melrose avenue shop is being remodeled with no set launch date, Asghedom said he was committed to continuing his brother’s legacy at Crenshaw and Slauson in a non-commercial way.
Eventually, the family plans to build a youth center on the original site, reopen Steve’s Barber Shop as a place that will provide free haircuts to young people, and create a museum or public site that will honor Hussle.
”We want a place where tourists and fans can come to pay homage versus a place that was all about sales.”
According to Asghedom, Hussle’s participation in a music production program for young people in Watts had been transformative, and he desired to replicate that program in his neighborhood.
“Everybody out of that program, including my brother, ended up pursuing a successful music career,” he said. “Just a little effort and a little resources directed toward the youth can really make a big impact … So a youth center would be the best thing we could put there, in the vein of what Hussle stood for: something to inspire the youth and teach them skills that they can use to be productive and legitimate when they become adults.”
Hussle’s business partner David Gross said Hussle’s decision to own the lot was “profound and poetic” for the rapper and his drive to support community entrepreneurship: “Whatever we do, it will be an enduring piece of Nipsey’s legacy and what he meant to the neighborhood … it will be thereafter I’m long gone.”
