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The counterculture is marking a fairly mainstream milestone in Albuquerque this week.

Free Radicals, the "greaser/political/punk" clothing and accessories store in the University Area, is celebrating its fifth anniversary and moving to less modest digs.

This past week they moved their inventory — including latex fetishwear, Manic Panic eyeshadow and the brand new bacon wallet (it's blood-red and off-white, like a piece of bacon) — across the street at the corner of Yale Boulevard and Lead Avenue Southeast. Next to the Dollar Store.

"It's a big jump. The new store's three times the size," said John Morningstar, who owns the store with his wife, Nan. "That's a big deal. We feel it'll be more visible. We feel it'll be more user-friendly."

In the old stifling space, the owners resorted to plastering T-shirts and posters on the ceiling, a clear sign they had maxed out the room's capacity. Now that they can spread out, inventory will, too. Nan says she might bring back the dress-up Jesus magnets. John wants to produce a line of political merchandise.

"I see things more in terms of class," he said, and when he's wearing short sleeves, that's obvious. He's got the word "working" tattooed on his right forearm. "Class" runs down the left.

It helps get people talking about such punk politics and, he says, cuts to the chase.

"I felt like if I could get my arms to have half the conversation for me, I'd be saving some time," he said.

Nan, whose hair is usually tinted vibrant green, has matching skull-and-crossbones wristband tattoos. The couple have been together 11 years, married for seven.

Five years ago, they were living in Atlanta and looking to open a store like this in a city that didn't have one. It would be "unethical" to compete against a like-minded store, John said, not to mention bad business.

"We wanted a town that needed us as opposed to one where we would be superfluous," he said.

They looked at Knoxville, Tenn.; Evansville and Bloomington, Ind.; Lexington and Louisville, Ky.; and Pittsburgh. They finally found their fit in the Southwest.

Albuquerque was "an incubator for us," he said, a place to try out their business model.

"After the first year," Nan added, "we felt like this business will tread water as long as we want it to."

"For the last five years we've been refining what we do," her husband said.

The name Free Radicals clearly proclaims a punk attitude. (In science, free radicals are highly reactive atoms or groups of atoms that can affect DNA and are held in check by antioxidants.)

"The official slogan is `Clothes and Crap' . . . which is a pithy explanation," John said. "I just call it counterculture, usually.

"For us, counterculture is all the same. No matter where it comes from, it's the same spirit - whether it's greaser culture of the '50s or punk from the '70s. If I could, I'd carry zoot suits from the '30s.

"It's all kind of the same idea of going against the flow of what the culture is."

They say they put the money they make back into the store and have other jobs to live on.

"Success to me would be if I only had to work 20 hours outside here to pay my bills," John said.

Usually, Nan opens the store and then goes to a night job in retail sales. John drives a truck during the day and closes the store.

The Morningstars didn't take long after arriving before having an impact on Albuquerque's culture. Four months after they opened the store in 2003, they launched a burlesque troupe that has since branched into two: Belladonna and Burlesque Noir.

In 2005, the couple helped launch Duke City Derby, plugging Albuquerque into the women's roller derby revival. Nan skates for the HoBots under a name more suitable for a counterculture newspaper to publish.

The couple says Duke City residents, especially youth, are eager to join in the activities of the alternative lifestyle.

"It's all a part of offering the community something to do," Nan said. "If you live in a place and love a place, you can't walk around saying `This place sucks. There's nothing to do.' "

"What we've learned about Albuquerque," John said, "is that Albuquerque has tremendous opportunities to do things, as long as you're willing to make certain compromises."

That includes adjusting your expectations.

"As long as you define success well," he said, "you can be successful here. The way I define it is, do you feel like you've brought anything valuable to your community?"

And how does he square selling $42 studded leather belts and a $160 straitjacket dress with adding value to his adopted city? He says he and his wife observe an "ethical neutrality" by not capitalizing on basic necessities and following the mantra: "Profit if you can, but not at someone else's expense."

He gives an example:

"Everything here is a non-necessity item. . . . You can buy stomper shoes here, but you can't buy nonskid black work shoes you wear to your restaurant job and watch grease eat away at them."

It would be worse, he said, to be running the Smith's around the corner and charging $4.50 for a gallon of orange juice.

"If I was getting rich doing this, I'd feel bad about this," he said.

Customers need to be aware of the choices they make, Nan said.

"Know why you want what you want," she reasoned. "Don't just buy $150 jeans just because your friend wants them. Buy them because you want them."

She said she's not averse to vetoing a purchase that smacks of mindless trendiness.

"One time I wouldn't let a girl buy Motorhead pins," she said, "because she couldn't name one Motorhead song."

John said he doesn't want outside investors or a mainstream marketing scheme.

"If I want to go broke doing this, that's my business," he said. "I can be as niche as I want."

And they say they don't want to bust the bank accounts of younger customers, which is why they carry small stuff like stickers, patches, buttons, keychains and flip-flops.

"So if you walk into the store with $2 in your pocket," Nan said, "you can still buy something."

Most of the customers are in their teens and 20s.

"A lot of kids are not just bored, but they're disaffected," John said. "(They feel) powerless not just to change their lives but to change the world around them. . . . What we're hoping to model is that there are still opportunities in life."

He said the store is intended to foster an exchange of ideas by customers of all ages.

"We try to get 14-year-old kids and 35-year-olds to talk," he said. "Everyone meets on neutral ground here."

That seems to go a long way toward distracting him from the working-class life of driving a truck to put orange juice on the table.

"This is still the only thing I can find that gets me out of bed and makes me feel productive and makes me glad I have a dream to chase," he said.

A little while later, Nan opens a box of the latest must-have piece of kitsch — the bacon wallets — and her face lights up. John says it's not unusual to place an order, forget about it and get a kick out of it when it arrives a couple of months later.

"It's like Christmas every time the (stuff) gets here," he said, using a punkier word for "stuff."

"It's like you're your own mystery shopper. It's amazing. I don't ever want it to become too serious for us."