Four years before the idea for lAUg AUf popped into my mind, I opened an art gallery / event venue a block away from the shop we're in now, on a little cut-through street that most people thought was an alley. It was a showcase for my sculptural furniture along with curated works from five artists who I knew personally. I called it Akkseum, pronounced "axiom" (a universal truth). My nickname as a kid was Akke. The remaining letters are "sum." So it represented "the sum of all things Akke."

I've always felt like a kid (I kinda have "adult imposter syndrome"). I'm an eternal optimist who believes that eneething is possible. One of those things was that I could turn a dump of an industrial garage, in a hidden location, into a space full of magic and that, in it, I could inspire people to feel the same way.

The truth was that I was in over my head, hemorrhaging money; having invested 7-figures (that I didn't have and certainly couldn't afford) and four years of effort into a moonshot. But I believed in what I was building so completely that it didn't discourage me. I poured everything I had into it: my time, my body, my heart.

One day, a guy named Stephen wandered in through the garage roll-up on his cellphone.

"Babe, I'm in Soho. Really I'm in Northport, but I just found the coolest place ever. Let me call you back."

Stephen and I had a great chat. He was an art teacher who, in a previous life, designed corporate logos. Nothing came of it at the time, other than the thrill of a creative understanding what I was doing. But we exchanged phone numbers.

Shortly after that, two years into a ten-year lease with no escape clause, the town discovered that the building was liable for a number of code violations. Even though they loved having Akkseum in town, they had no choice but to shut the place down, leaving me locked into eight more years of rent and no way out. I thought I'd buried my family.

That night, at my lowest, a Post-it note my six-year-old son had left on the breakfast table stopped me cold. Five little words, in the carefree misspelling of a little kid: "I can tern into eneething." (That's a story of its own, so I'll save it.)

But instantly, my thinking flipped. I stopped fixating on the opportunity costs, on everything I'd lost, and started to believe that some opportunity benefit would come from the huge risk I'd taken. I couldn't look ahead and find it. I just had to trust that, somewhere in Akkseum, a golden bean had been planted, and it was slowly germinating.

Five years later, it sprouted and has been growing into a magic stalk.

When I knew Laug Auf needed a clean, iconic mark, I reached out to Stephen. We built the lAUg AUf logo together, back and forth, until we found it. A benefit I could never have put on a spreadsheet, planted on an ordinary day at a gallery that no longer exists.

LAUGh AUFten, love always

For the record, luckily, I managed to negotiate my way out of the lease. So, it turned out that a shutdown that felt like the end was actually what stopped the bleeding and started a new adventure.

Another AUspiciAUs AUccasion