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The first time I remember being inside a proper corner store, I was five. Prior to moving to Santa Cruz, we’d lived on a golf course in Monterey and done a stint in an adobe house in New Mexico. Now we were moving back from the desert Southwest to the quirky beach town of Santa Cruz where my parents had friends. And just for the summer, we were offered our friend Gary’s Victorian cottage near the cliffs as our home base while he was abroad traveling. The neighborhood was shabby and cheerful. It was also, incidentally, ground zero for Northern California surfing: the world-class surf break, Steamer Lane, sat just beneath the lighthouse a few blocks away.
Gary, a close family friend, was a tall Nordic bachelor with a deep voice with whom I was enchanted. I was equally enchanted with the eccentricities of Gary’s cottage; his toy soldier collection, his neat stacks of identical Levi’s in the closet, the foreign scent of his old gas stove in the kitchen, and the snapdragons spilling off his back deck. I even unearthed risqué pens at his desk that, when tilted, would remove the bikini-babe’s bikini. The most seductive thing about our new living situation, however, was our proximity to a corner store a few doors down. The idea of walking to a store struck me as deeply cosmopolitan.
The corner store was called Circle Market. Up until this point, the only grocery shopping I’d known involved a suburban ten-minute drive to a sterile Safeway that floated in a sea of parking lot. Circle Market had no parking lot. It sat in the middle of a residential block of bungalows and cottages and bore a primitive, hand-painted sign that spanned the length of its abbreviated roofline. Inside things were tight: only four short aisles, sparsely stocked. The store’s perimeter was lined with refrigerated drink cases; cerveza posters depicting busty maidens peered down at me from above. My first impression was that Circle Market reminded me of our visits to Mexico – the proprietor stood behind the elevated cash register, surveying a room of chipped linoleum floor, ice chests full of paletas, shelves with a few toiletries, sunscreen, hot sauce, visors and straw mats for the beach. Emanating throughout the corner store was the faint scent of mold. The only real difference I could see, between a bodega in Puerto Vallarta and Circle Market, was the surfboard wax behind the counter next to the cigarettes.
Cleverly, the two most carefully merchandized areas of the store were the liquor and the candy aisles. The former lined the walls: every type of Mexican and American beer imaginable, chilled and ready to be popped outside the front door. The candy aisle was designed precisely at kid eye-level: two long shelves displaying an irresistible array of sweets as colorful and eye catching as a Wonka fantasy. Coming from the suburbs, I marveled at the diminutive scale of everything in the surf town corner store: what an odd, edited collection of things they sold! Miniature Kellogg’s cereal boxes, small bottles of ketchup. What is surf wax? Why is there just one variety of crackers? For a kid accustomed to the excesses of the roaring-eighties corporate grocery store, the intimacy and personality of Circle Market captivated my imagination. Immediately I felt affection for this place.
Circle Market, I’ve since learned, is not an anomaly. The more California beach towns I’ve explored, the more I come to know the residential corner store is a kind of ubiquitous cultural institution germane to coastal towns here. It’s a mix of both Mexican and surf culture, of salty-haired parents with wetsuits drying on their back deck, and little kids who learn to skateboard before they can read. The surf town corner store is warm and unfussy and unpretentious; and it’s handy if you run out of milk. It’s where you overhear the dawn patrol surf report from the locals on the front bench. It’s what life must have been like before 7-Eleven conquered the small towns of California.
I love you, Circle Market; in the irrational, poignant way that you love your messy little brother when his chin and overalls are covered in chocolate. You are imperfect, small, and loveable and you will always belong to me.