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          


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