For about as long as I can remember Mr. BJ's being there, which is pretty much forever in my recollection, the proprietors were a silver-haired couple who for decades smiled and served up sales of junkfood and beer, sundries and sodas, bubblegum and dogfood.
The interior had a high, maybe 15 foot, ceiling, and the walls were plastered with mounted posters, neon signs, and plagues dating back in some cases a few generations. The shelves were full and beer had to be stacked as tall as a basketball player - we're only one block from the beach, the Esplanade, as it's called along that stretch of coastline south of the Redondo Beach Pier.
A lot of history in this place. Some of it I stumbled over one day, craning my neck, admiring all the old cigarette and alcohol advertisements leaving almost no bare spots on the walls.
The old-timey coolers, a cha-ching cash register, and the old lady and her husband sitting around on their stools, affable, smiling, and welcoming of conversation with kids running in barefoot, covered with sand.
I stood, almost leaning backwards, like a turkey trying to drown itself in the rain, my gaze affixed to an out of place poster with some rips and ugly tape strips keeping it intact in a few spots.
This was not your average poster, but one of those half the size of your bedroom wall posters, tacked or taped up there so that the middle of the poster hid a few feet of the corner along the wall ceiling behind it.
I suppose the first things that caught my attention were the freakish, familiar, and circus-like characters juxtaposed in the four quadrants of the poster, but what piqued my interest was what appeared to be signatures. Autographs. Three.
I suddenly became aware that I was craning my neck, looking almost straight up, dropped my gaze, and faced the one of the proprietors sitting patiently behind the register. Pointing up to the poster I blurted out, "Hi there, that's Motley Crue."
"Yes it is," his wife said, seated by the front window of the store so she could people watch and gab with or welcome customers as they filed through the doors of the historic building, "They're such good boys, too", she added. "Yes, fine boys", echoed her husband.
I was taken aback some, These folks had to be at least 50 years old when members of the multi-platinum band were born, and the lady spoke of them as if they were regular dinner guests at their house.
I needed answers. Now. "Where did you get this autographed poster?" Now her husband piped in, "They gave it to us", while his wife immediately offered up that, "They used to buy all their beer here a few times a week", or something along those lines, I was having a Charlie Brown moment, blah blah blah, they're well acquainted, how odd, how cute, how the hell?
So, apparently, because the band lived just down the street on the Esplanade (an infamous crib from which much sin was forged), this was THE place where the band, and the band's crew and cadre stockpiled their daily arsenal of sudsy supplies.
I think they told me that bandmembers themselves had put the poster up themselves, which made sense, everything else was leveled and perpindicular, this was tacked or taped to both the ceiling and the wall, covering other marketing trophies of years gone by.
We chatted for a while, myself and whomever it was that I had stumbled into the store with, and the two grey foxes who were as jovial as could be. In the back of my mind, I was thinking about Vince killing Razzles in an auto accident leaving their store and they're just going on about how swell those boys are - the seriously drug addled members of Motley Crue. Sure. Vince was supposedly sober at the time, of course, that's just part of the terms of his probation, along with drunk driving PSAs - not a one I've ever seen.
More than anything though, I was genuinely tickled to see this old married couple, running a busy corner market all by themselves, and you could say, actually friends with the boys in Motley Crue. Go figure.
Catalina and Broadway are the two streets running North and South parallel to and sandwiched in between Esplanade which overlooks the sand and bike path of Torrance and Redondo Beaches, and Pacific Coast Highway. There's not much traffic that isn't neighborhood traffic, and here's this little gem of a moment I tuck away for a few years.
Those years passed and one day, while going down to the beach with my girlfriend, we happened to park just around the corner from Mr. BJ's Market. I want to show my girl the poster, and let the couple tell her the story too.
We walked in, and I immediately turned my head around and looked up, only to discover that the poster was no longer there, and many of the 50 year old signs and posters were gone too. I could see a lot of paint that needed a coat 40 years prior, and I turned to the guy behind the counter, near his wife - a much younger couple.
"What happened to the poster up there on the ceiling?", to which the man responded, "I don't know". I pressed the subject, mentioning that it had been up there years ago, and inquiring as to whether the old owners still operated this place. Bot he and his wife vassilated between being mute and providing dismissals that told me otherwise. Rather indifferent, with an air of condescension and brewing impatience.
I scanned the long store, the wall behind the counter, only one third filled with inventory, and it seemed as if the shelves running along the floor were half vacant too. I got the sense that these two didn't actually care much for their job or the community, they were patently inconvenienced by the sudden break in the monotony of waiting for customers to patronize their establishment.
I wasn't going to buy anything here, but probably would have bought an ice cream sandwich or something had the friendly couple been there.
To be certain, it had been a few years, but the place looked identical to me from the outside, inside was the vibe of a bankruptcy sale, or perhaps it was just that the vibrations inside were devoid of any welcoming warmth.
That was at least ten years ago, and probably half that many again when the place was bustling with local children and parents and tourists.
I stumbled across the photo and was instantly reminded of those fond, and subequent less than so fond, recollections. I always liked the little corner markets and liquor stores. Booze and beer and candy and little plastic toys for the kids; some with small produce sections for when someone misses an item on the grocery list and it must be had.
I built a lot of little balsa gliders and flew them around as a child, most purchased from corner markets just like that, from clerks who worked full time in them after returning from some military enlistment, and staying employed there in those same little corner nooks until they reached retirement.
There are little plastic army men, purchased in packs in stores like that, buried and long forgotten, in the backyards of houses fanning out for several blocks around each one of those stores.
These are the pieces of the Inner Blocks of our lives, all comingled and scattered about like a web of movie clips. Each one distinct and separate from other association such as any definite chronology of events, happened upon seemingly at random when another moment triggers such reminiscence in the here and now.
We cherish many of these conversation worthy episodes of our lives, while mostly recounting them without comment, sometimes, they will evoke a response in others such as, "Yo, dude! Are you listening? Hello! McFly?"...
To which we smile, reassuringly, adding a note to self that, much like those old corner markets that used to be scattered about like freckles all over suburban neighborhoods, these reflections upon our recollections are part of something that is no longer extant, yet still comprises part of the sum of that person we have each of us become.
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