all featured photos borrowed from @joshstyle with permission (and luck!)
on another coffee-walk with my creative friend from middle school a couple of weeks ago, we passed a dilapidated old restaurant on laurel canyon in north hollywood that had long been gutted. i asked him what he thought it used to be, and he answered “i think it was a coco’s.” no confirmation yet as to the accuracy of that claim. i have only been to a coco’s once in my life, just after going skydiving (see previous post for more on that). i was in mild shock and my ears were still adjusting to the extreme changes in pressure, so i couldn’t hear or process anything being said to me for a few hours after the jump. he told me that the fun thing about coco’s was that they served pie with every meal. i told him, “i don’t remember pie, i just remember pain.”
i’ve been on a number of these walks lately, and with every one it seems i notice a new hole where something used to be – one after the other, business closure after business closure. so many have me wondering what used to be there – did i just never pay attention to my surroundings before? it feels like bits of my childhood have been slowly chipping away flake by flake. since lockdown first began in march, suddenly it’s peeling away in sheets – not in a satisfying way like with wallpaper, but in a horrifying way like skin you weren’t planning on parting ways with. i am reminded of flipping forward over my bike’s handle bars about a decade ago and landing on the pavement so hard i thought i’d broken my elbow. i got up to grimace at the raw patch of dermis where my skin had just been seconds before, and while cursing, walked a few paces to see if i could locate it on the sidewalk. i found it.
last night, i learned the entire fry’s electronics store chain suddenly and permanently closed at midnight. crushed doesn’t begin to cover it. i never could have imagined that i would find myself tearing up over an electronics store at three in the morning. there are some places in your life that are just fixed staples as far back as you can remember, places you never imagine could ever just not exist. fry’s was definitely at the top of the list in my book.
though i’d been to a handful of their other locations, my dad used to take me to the burbank store regularly, as it was so close to our house in north hollywood. in fact i distinctly remember distractedly following some other man around that i mistook for my dad. i was only about waist-high and clearly not looking up, i must have been about five or six, but still old enough to fully realize my own embarrassment when my dad eventually called me from the end of the aisle and this man had likely been questioning why a child was following him so closely, side-stepping alongside him as he browsed each piece of hardware in turn. it was like going to an amusement park – i was never disappointed to have to run an errand there. there was just so much to take in from the moment you entered to the moment you left.
when i was very young, the giant squid bursting through the wall made me uneasy and i was sure to keep an eye on him to make sure that he wouldn’t decide to spontaneously animate and wreak havoc on the many laptops stationed below. i had a soft spot for the cheeky green martians stationed above the entrance to the checkout line, which was fashioned in the likeness of a 50s diner. i’ll never forget the large yellow receipts that had to be checked as you exited to make sure you didn’t try to sneak anything extra out between check out and walking towards the door. it was truly a treasure.
to add to the list of covid casualties – 101 coffee shop in hollywood, du-par’s in pasadena, and most tragically, four ’n 20 in valley village – among dozens of other gems in los angeles. at the very least, i got to have breakfast one last time with my designated four ’n 20 buddy on february 28th 2020, just a couple of weeks before everything shut down, but it’s definitely been a couple of years since i’ve needed to visit fry’s, and for that i curse myself and my various gadgets for not malfunctioning more to merit a stop there.
learning about fry’s closure hours after its last day of operation felt akin to the regretfulness of losing my elbow skin – if i could just go back in time thirty seconds (or in fry’s case, three hours), i could have avoided this. the real tragedy here is simply not being able to say goodbye. nothing is sacred.
