It’s the last week *Zushy, 2406 Lincoln Way, will be open. For Liza Kindred, cq owner of *Zushy, it’s the beginning and end of a dream.

She’s not in mourning for the store. She happily eats a sandwich a few hours after being interviewed by the Daily, brushing crumbs off her ruched black turtleneck and black capris while she talks to a tattoo artist from Jaded Angel, the tatoo parlor downstairs from *Zushy. Her legs are crossed and her pointy-toed slingbacks hand in the air.

“I have a list of things I want to do before I die,” Kindred says. “And now I’ve done it.”

Kindred has completed one of the many things that has occupied her ever-growing list of goals for life.

To her, accomplishing goals at any cost is the most important thing.

“When I am 85 years old and sitting in my rocking chair at the nursing home…” She stops.

“Can we change that to 95?”

Many 85-year-olds are out and about, she comments, then continues.

“When I am 95 years old and sitting in my rocking chair at the nursing home I want to look back at my life and say, ‘I did it.’ I don’t think I am going to be rich monetarily, but I am experience-wise.”

At 25, Kindred has accomplished a good chunk of her to-do list. Since she opened *Zushy a year and a half ago, she’s crossed two more things off her list. One was being a curator of a gallery show, which she did with local artists.

“The other thing was gamble in Las Vegas.”

She laughs as she tells the story of gambling a quarter at a slot machine while she was in Las Vegas on a business trip. She lost.

To start the store, Kindred spent two years cultivating the way the store would run, its inventory system and values. She attempted to get a loan in August 2001, but after Sept. 11, no bank loans were being accepted.

She found the space the store is currently in and fell in love with it. Before she could get the money to start renting it, a Republican candidate took it.

She says she began following the Republican primaries, just to see if the candidate lost, since his lease was contingent on him winning the primaries.

She says *Zushy was more than a clothing store.

“It opened a lot of doors for a lot of people,” she says.

Her favorite event, spurred by *Zushy, were the fashion shows. They were extremely stressful for Kindred.

“I felt like I was going crazy,” she says. “I would look at people like ‘What? What?'”

As she talks about the store and the things she accomplished, she never says a negative thing about owning *Zushy, only that the stress was difficult.

“I had insomnia, lost weight…”

She hasn’t even had time since the store opened to enjoy it’s success, Kindred says.

Even in its last moments, as shoppers peruse the sales and try to score “a piece of history” as Kindred put it, *Zushy does not seem so much a store as its own being. It was a gallery space for local graphic artists and clothing designers, and hosted periodical parties for showcasing local disc jockeys.

“It was a clothing store at its core,” Kindred says.