Atomic Bombshell drops on Huntingburg
These days, Jes is busy at her recently opened salon, the Atomic Bombshell Beauty Parlour, at 302 N. Main Street in Huntingburg. She is another local that flew the coop and then returned with big trendy ideas for a new business for the area.
She left for New York three weeks after graduating from Southridge in 2002 to pursue an acting career. She was attending the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and acting when a hair and makeup artist called in sick and Jes filled in. ”They [the other actresses] would see me doing my hair and then I started doing their hair and makeup,” she said. “so I was doing my hair and makeup and their hair and makeup; that’s when I found that I really liked it.”
Her acting career brought her to Louisville, where she attended Empire Beauty School of Cosmetology.
She continued in her acting career until she had her second child, Maverick, who is now two. With Maverick coming on the scene, she decided the long rehearsals and nights away didn’t work for her anymore and took a job with MAC Cosmetics.
She worked at two salons and was a manager and makeup artist for MAC. Her job allowed her to constantly be working with fashion shows and celebrities in the Louisville area. MAC is a preferred line of cosmetics for celebrities.
Jes loved her job with MAC and just before deciding to move back to Huntingburg, they offered her a job in Chicago as their resident makeup trainer. But with her oldest son Kingston just getting ready to enter school, she decide to come back home.
“I had to decide if was going to go that way and keep on with this craziness or was I going to come back home to family,” she said. “That sounded a lot better. School in Chicago or Louisville for Kingston didn’t sound so good.”
Coming home allowed her to explore an idea she had to create a fun salon of her own. She had considered moving back about two years ago to establish the new salon, but another promotion from MAC had kept her in Louisville then.
When she arrived in Huntingburg in June, Jes hit the ground running and worked with her family to renovate a building that had been originally been a gas station/service center and most recently, an air conditioner and heater repair service.
“When I first saw this building, I just didn’t think it would work,” Jes explained.
But her dad, Mark Gasser, and her grandfather Don “Papa” Borden, turned the eye sore into an attraction that’s now turning heads as people enter Huntingburg on Main Street/U.S. 231.
Jes talks fast and is always moving around her new parlour. She’s answering questions, talking to customers and offering hot chocolate or coffee to people sitting in the stylish 1950s pop culture chairs in the waiting area. Magazines heralding that glitzy time on their covers are spread across the table in front of the chairs.
The black and white checked floor, chandelier and Bombshell paintings evoke an exclamation of, “Oh, this is fancy,” from one elderly patron as she enters the door to the new business.
The location had held a garage and was also a gas station. Now, the bay doors provide an added backdrop to an already fancy interior. “Every guy that comes in here that’s the first thing they notice,” Jes explains about the garage doors.
They were her dad, Mark Gasser’s idea. They were wondering what to do with the gaping bays and the old doors when he just went and replaced them with brand new doors, according to Jes. “It was perfect.”
To name her business Jes looked for inspiration from the 1950s, a time she considers to be sexy and glamorous. “I was thinking about what the 1950s makes me think about and it made me think of the atomic age,” she explained. “Then I was trying to think of another word for pinup girl? Like a sexy, pretty girl; a bombshell, and that was it. A play on words, Atomic Bombshell.”
Liz Hoffman, Dayna Seib, Lindsey Steckler and Sarah Underhill work with Jes at the full-service salon. They offer spas and pedi/manicures, makeup artistry and classes, waxing, and organic sunless tanning. On-site hair and makeup services are offered for special events and weddings. Monthly beauty, hair and health workshops will be featured, along with “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” parties.
Atomic Bombshell Beauty Parlour is open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays.
An open house will take place from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, Dec. 13, and will include a “Medicine Cabinet Makeover” workshop from 7 to 9 p.m.
The phone number is 684-8048 and their email address is atomicbombshellbeautyparlour@yahoo.com
Customers can also contact them and set up appointments through her Facebook Page.
“Everyone is so excited,” Jes said about the reaction from the community since she has opened. “Everyone that comes in here says this place is great.”
