Q&A: Creator of Nassau St. cutouts

life-size cutouts

The Daily Princetonian sat down with Mimi Omiecinski, the owner of Princeton Tour Company — the tour agency that created the cutouts — to find out more behind the story of how she first started Princeton Tour Company and how the various cutouts got to stand on Nassau Street.

Daily Princetonian: How did you first move to Princeton?

Mimi Omiecinski: The short answer is because of my husband’s job. He is a medical device corporate marketing guy who works with Johnson & Johnson. They were moving him to a different location, and so I stayed in Princeton for a long weekend. I absolutely, completely fell in love in 72 hours. I said to my husband: They’re going to work you hard anywhere, so you just have to give me Princeton. So we purchased a condominium on top of Hamilton Jewelers, which is great. Part of what motivated us to purchase the condominium is that we have a view of Nassau Hall. We essentially have beachfront property.

DP: How did you get started with these cutouts and who was the first cutout?

MO: I first put those cutouts as a way for people in the tours I operated to have fun. In the beginning, it started in the alleyway of Starbucks and Landau. The owners of the alleyway, Henry and Robert Landau, thought that what I was doing was really great. They were actually the ones who first told me that Charlie Gibson was a trustee of the University.

The first sign was Albert Einstein. I chose Albert because when people come to visit Princeton, they think about two things: Ivy League school and Einstein. Half of our tour is about the University, and half is about the town and Albert is part of both. He is just darling and immediately identifiable. Who doesn’t want to put their face in Albert’s hair?

Next was Michelle Obama ’85, just after she became first lady. I was so proud of her story, and I just thought she was really neat. Then I put out F. Scott Fitzgerald. When I really started digging into F. Scott, I just had to put out one for him, even though he was a famous dropout. I start to learn everything about him, and I got what I call an “orange crush,” which is when I start liking a graduate of the University. I get a crush on these people that I research and then I think that they have to have a sign. Then I also got a Jonathan Edwards sign because he was really influential during his time as president of the University.

DP: Do the cutouts get damaged easily, or perhaps stolen?

MO: This past summer there were some rowdy British tourists and they tried to take Einstein and Michelle Obama with them back to England. The Borough police caught them and managed to recover Einstein, but they took off with Michelle Obama. So if they made it through customs, my cutout of Michelle is probably in England now.

DP: Any other incidents of theft with the cutouts?

MO: Well, four days after I put out these brand new signs, the cutout with Cornel West and former President Grover Cleveland on it was taken. I don’t know who took it. But don’t worry, I will make sure that Cornel West and Grover come back. I mean every time I saw that sign I thought of Brother West, who used to call me Sister Mimi when he was here. It was a thrill. He’s great. There was one day he was caught in a rainstorm and I gave him my umbrella.

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DP: How did you decide to put General Petraeus up as a cutout?

MO: Well, the thing is that when the old signs were taken this past summer, there was an online article done about those signs. Somebody wrote a comment on the online section of the article, which said that the people on the signs were all liberals and that there were no conservatives. I thought that was a valid comment. So I decided to put up General Petraeus. I did wonder if Petraeus would go down Nassau Street and take a picture with his sign when he visited campus.

DP: If you could do one more cutout, whom would you do?

MO: Currently one of the cutouts has a blank other side. The reason that the one side is blank is that I ask my new tour groups who they think should be on the new ones. There are really so many alumni I could put up there, if you think about it. A lot of people say George Schultz [’42] because he has a tiger tattoo on his fanny. I would love to put that sign out there but I’m afraid of George Schultz maybe getting angry. But my dream is that one day if I ever meet George Schultz, I would ask him permission to have a cutout and have a little flap where there would be a darling little tiger tattoo.

Personally, I would also love for the senior class from the University to allow the Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize winner — an award for the senior who has most clearly manifested excellent scholarship, strength of character and effective leadership — to get a cutout. It would be cool to take a current student who won this incredible distinguished award. I would like to celebrate somebody who is clearly on that path to becoming part of the famous people of Princeton. If the senior class wants to do it via a poll of who should get a cutout, I would also be totally up for that.

DP: Do you think that you will stay in Princeton for quite some time, and do you think that you will keep the cutouts standing on Nassau Street?

MO: The signs started out as part of the tour business, but now I feel that they are just as much the town’s signs as they are the tour’s signs. What’s great about it is that my tours start and stop inside the University Store and they do all that at no cost to me. With the rents on Nassau Street, there’s no way I could have this tour company. I want everyone to have an Ivy League experience on the tour, which requires a lot of equipment, and the University Store does it at no cost. It’s just another example of the town-gown relations that can only happen at a place like Princeton. I can guarantee you that this is not happening in Harvard, and it sure isn’t happening at Yale. It makes me celebrate Princeton even more.

What’s great about Princeton is that it is a never-ending source. You can never stop learning. There is no place on the planet like Princeton, N.J. I would eBay everything in my life to stay in Princeton.