Shopping in East New York

Silky's Brooklyn’s team of skilled screenprinters bedeck T-shirts, posters, and canvases with custom-inked designs that reflect each member’s avant-garde sensibilities. Wielding plastisol and water-based inks, artists adorn otherwise humdrum garments with up to six spot colors. Silky's artists can also adorn surfaces with specialty hues including fluorescent and metallic shade, and offer Pantone and sample color matching to ensure that no customer leaves without the ability to blend in with their chartreuse kitchen counters.

Since 1993, AKO Design Center has outfitted homes around the world with quality, brand-name furniture. AKO can furnish any room or hidden laboratory in the house with sleek, contemporary items ranging from beds and recliners to office desks. The store's design team works with customers in their design studio to help create sophisticated looks for the home or workplace, and they also collaborate with manufacturers to produce stylish pieces that complement each other when purchased as a set or that add decorative accents to already existing design schemes.

Licensed optician Rita Beller has been with Eye Appeal since its founding as Bay Opticians more than 25 years ago, and she continues to ply her trade alongside fellow opticians Oleg Liberov and Konstantin Urman. Together, the trio brightens patients’ sight by conducting eye exams and fitting faces with glasses in mere minutes. Like a pair of gold-plated safety goggles, the shop’s collection of specs combines fashion with attention to ocular health, and includes frames from Gucci, Armani, Tom Ford, and Bulgari.

The frames at J. Reznik Studios don't just immortalize old photographs and new college diplomas; they also keep the memories of fallen heroes alive. As the studio's in-house artist, Jodi Reznik has eased the pain of lost loved ones for dozens of families—such as those of Suffolk County police officer Glen Ciano and NYPD officer Russel Timoshenko—by memorializing them with brushstrokes on canvas. Equal parts frame shop, gallery, and conversation space, the studio beckons art lovers of all stripes inside to interact with Jodi and her husband Jeff while they browse her work or select a frame for an existing piece. Expert printmakers also enlarge and emblazon images on paper and canvas to forge eye-catching photo gifts, and staffers specializing in flower preservation enshrine bouquets from weddings or punish daisies with unpaid gambling debts behind quality glass.