n the corner of 14th Avenue and Fourth Street S.E. in Dinkytown, perched above the street traffic below, is a tiny mall, filled with some little known shops in the area.
It is in this building that Bob Zimmerman lived, a man known to us now as Bob Dylan. So the tenants there say, although no one can remember in which room he lived.
And while many shops have come and gone, these three shops have managed to persevere through the years.

After 21 years of business, Donna Slocum and her husband Tomas don’t complain. Their small import clothing business in Dinkytown remains, after many of their contemporaries have long since closed their doors.
But Donna Slocum, part-owner of Maya Market, doesn’t necessarily like the changes that have taken place in her community.
“There’s much less diversity now” (than 20 years ago), Slocum said of the area. “Big places come in and take big spaces,” she said of some of the chain-stores invading Dinkytown.
The Slocum’s shop is filled from top to bottom with bright-colored fabrics, natural fibers and hand-made clothes.
Merchandise includes blankets and berets, sweaters and sandals. Students can purchase anything from hand-knit sweaters to mittens made from Alpaca wool.
“Those are great. They’re really warm,” she said of the mittens.
Slocum likened Alpaca to llamas and said, “They’re like that, except shorter.”
The cloth colors are bright, reflecting the marketplaces where she and her husband get their merchandise.
“(In Latin America) they love bright colors,” she said. “The brighter, the better.”
Slocum and her husband spend two to three months in Latin America every year, she said, purchasing merchandise to sell the following year.
“We’re leaving Jan. 26,” she said of plans for her next trip. “Just closing up. We’ll see you in May. As you can tell, we’re not exactly hard-driving business people.”
Because of import laws, Slocum said she and her husband used to have to stitch labels into each article of clothing by hand. Now, because she’s been doing business for so long, many of the people she buys from do it already.
Since 1975, the year Maya Market opened, Slocum has seen many customers walk through her doors.
“I have kids whose parents came here,” she said with a laugh. “I’ve got my second generation of shoppers. I think it’s a riot.”
Word of mouth is an important aspect of conducting business above the street level of Dinkytown, Slocum said. She also sets up tables on the street in summer, trying to draw students upstairs.
But even with the difficulties of attracting business, Slocum said she wouldn’t move to another part of town.
“I don’t know where else I’d want to be,” she said. “There’s 50,000 students over there,” she says, pointing out the window toward the East Bank campus. “Plus faculty, and employees. There’s a really large pool to draw from.”
Besides, Slocum said she is very happy with what she has.
“I have a roof over my head, food to eat, I’m doing what I like to do. … What could be better than that?”

Inside the bustling shop of Tom the Tailor and Shining Moon Alterations, the hum of the sewing machines are muffled by the rapid-fire chatter of the two partners who own the store.
Listening to Tom Dale and Minh Cao is like being stuck at the net during a professional tennis match.
Dale and Cao have worked together for many years, though the exact number is debatable, depending upon whom you ask.
Dale started working with Cao after her husband called Dale one day, and asked if he needed any help.
“Cao’s husband worked at JCPenney’s in Florida, and then later he came to the University,” said Dale. “While he was here he called me and told me his wife sewed, and asked if I needed any help. I said ‘yes’,” Dale said.
“When I first found Minh, I gave her about $150 worth of alterations to do. And she brought them all back the next day, perfectly done,” he said.
Since then the working relationship has bloomed, until finally Dale offered Cao part of the shop.
Dale opened the shop in 1979, while still working at another job. But a year later, on his 30th birthday, he decided to work only for himself.
Both Dale and Cao work on projects independently, but a sense of teamwork still exists between the two.
“We work on a lot of projects together,” Dale said. “I do the leather aspect, and she does the fabric.”
One of the projects the two recently worked on was for the University of Minnesota Marching Band.
Cao stitched the pants for the drum major, while Dale handled the leather spats.
Part of the strength of their partnership is in the way the two of them look at the projects, Dale said.
“She’s looking at how things look, whereas I’m concentrating on how does it feel, and how does it work,” said Dale.
Cao is currently making jerseys for the Gophers football team.
“I’ve been working on stuff for them for about six years,” said Cao.
“No, it’s been more like 10,” Dale argues.
“No, not that long,” she replies.
“Well, what about all that stuff you did in your home? That was before you were in the shop, and you’ve been here for about six years,” he said.
“I think it’s about six years,” she responds with a firm voice.
Nonetheless, Dale can recite the last four coaches of the football team with whom the two have worked.
“We’re four coaches down the road,” he said.
Meeting the needs of the Gophers football team and Dale’s new nationally marketed product — the Zip-r-strip — take time, still, their businesses rely mostly on walk-ins and word-of-mouth.
“Walk-in stuff is at least 75 percent of the work,” said Dale.
The Zip-r-strip is a strip of leather that sews into a jacket, to make the jacket larger. One side zips into the existing zipper, while the other side becomes the new closure for the jacket.
“I see every job as a new solution to a problem,” he said. “I think I’d get pretty bored doing the same thing every day.”
Dale’s pride in his work is evident with the way he shows his products, and the way he speaks about his work.
“I like doing a good job,” Dale said. “If it’s not done right, I gotta go back and work on it until it’s right. I’m a compulsive pleaser. I want people to be happy with what I’ve done.”

Since her shopping excursions as a freshman at the University, Jodi Adelman loved the small shop dedicated to sorority and fraternity paraphernalia, tucked above the rooftops of other Dinkytown businesses.
When, years later, the opportunity to own the store presented itself, Adelman decided to go for it.
“I was working with the owner’s husband, and they got transferred to Colorado,” said Adelman. “So I said, ‘I love your shop, why don’t I buy it?’ And so I talked about it with my sorority sister, and we decided to buy the shop.”
Adelman and Suzanne Nystrom bought the store three years ago. Now the store is 11 years old, and Adelman said she loves being a business owner.
“I don’t look at it as work, I look at it as fun,” she said. “It’s enjoyment, in part from owning your own business, but also from the clientele.”
Although Adelman works a full-time job, and therefore cannot work in the shop most of the time, she still tries to get into the shop as much as possible.
“It’s like a family up here,” she said of the tiny business community upstairs. “If (a customer) comes for Tom the Tailor or Maya Market and they’re not here, we’ll call each other” to let them know.
Adelman said helping one another’s customers is not the only way the three businesses help each other.
“One time there looked like there was a break-in,” she said. “It looked as if someone had tried to get into all of the shops. First I noticed it in my shop, and then immediately went to look at the other shops before I went and called the police,” she said.
“I wish police would come up there more often,” she said, just to make sure everything is secure.
Because Adelman offers such a specialized product, she said it is not possible for her to work only in the shop and still support herself. But she said she loves coming in to work.
“The sorority and fraternity kids, they’re wonderful to work with,” said Adelman. “They always come in with these very creative ideas. And the end product is always neat.”
Customers can select items bearing Greek logos from the shelves and tables inside the room, or they can custom-order items, Adelman said.
“The ideas they’re bringing in, you can just tell they’re well thought-out,” she said. “Sometimes they’ll bring in pieces of scratch paper with drawings of what they want on it, and we try to accommodate them and still make sure it’s affordable.”
“It’s fun, it really is. Whether it’s a mug or a sweatshirt or boxers, we try to help them out,” she said.
Adelman said the smaller sizes of sororities and fraternities compared to those in the past can be hard on business.
But, she said, “Even though they don’t have as many numbers they really have quality people. They’re really very dedicated to it.”