Good Bye to my favorite Hardware store
By C. V.
Beck
As an apparent hardware groupie, I
developed my list of favorites. In this order, Gerald's, B&B and Busy Bee
and also the late, lamented and much missed Armstrong's, West LA, gone about 10
years now.
Just in the past two weeks, to my horror, I
saw in the weekly paper, the "You Know," that Gerald's is going down, closing
their doors after 51 years at the same place. I must assume that business had
been diminished by the Home Depot, down the hill, in what used to be that
beautiful piece of nature, that very open space area known as Ballona
wetlands...now also disappearing, being too rapidly replaced by what looks to me
like the Cross-Bronx Expressway and
Parkchester!
Thinking back on the I
guess not-enough-times I had been going to Gerald's, I remember it was quiet. I
guess too quiet but the service was always knowledgeable and very
personable,
on the human scale and very
satisfactory. I would go out of my way to go there because of the "Old-Timey"
quality which I miss in LA. The prices were good, too, as were the
sales.
I looked forward to the back
page of the "weekly" with the Gerald's ads and frequently found a sale I needed
to attend.
I recall also, when the
Hotel Furama was going to expand, (unnecessarily, I felt, after a period of
just not really doing anything,) that I had a faint feeling of unease about
Gerald's at that time, which I promptly dismissed. I never dreamed that
Gerald's would be the next victim of the now very apparent
hyper-over-development to take place in Westchester, now, I guess, going to
become Playa Vista South...Damnit! This "world class city" concept is really
destroying everything worthwhile about Los Angeles as fast as possible. What I
really don't understand is why a terrific backbone of the community like
Gerald's, should not have been given adequate time to relocate, rather than
breaking that which was not broken by "fixing" something that didn't need
fixing. Some truly affordable housing would work just fine at the Furama
location.
Finally, perhaps more
important are the circumstances of the employees of Gerald's Hardware. I have
heard reliably that about 40% of the employees have been promised other jobs in
the community. Unfortunately, that leaves 60% unaccounted for at this point in
time and let's just hope these people do not drop through the cracks and join
the ranks of unemployed and/or homeless.
Posted: Fri - July 1, 2005 at 04:19 AM