Shoppers Find a Little Holiday Magic : Retail: Despite recession, customers continue to flock to the store owned by the basketball legend.
The recession may be slowing some holiday shopping, but customers kept flocking to Magic Johnson’s sports store this weekend, drawn by their love for the basketball legend stricken with the AIDS virus.
His singular prominence in the minds of U.S. youth showed as one small boy dragged his unwilling mother into Magic’s 32 in Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Plaza simply to touch a basketball display.
Suzi Schnore and her daughter, Gena, 17, drove 40 miles on Saturday to buy a Los Angeles Lakers clock, a Magic hat with sequins and a video called “Magic Johnson, Always Showtime.”
Avid Lakers fans, the Schnore family cried after the team’s star announced Nov. 7 that he was retiring after learning he was infected with the AIDS virus. “I sent a card to the Forum,” Schnore said. “Not a sympathy card, but to tell him to go for his dreams. He has a real positive outlook. That’s why we like him.”
For many fans, buying a poster, hat or key chain emblazoned with Johnson’s name seemed to be a way of dealing with their sorrow. Jitahadi Imara dropped in to buy a T-shirt for a co-worker who was saddened by the news.
Johnson’s announcement had a more profound impact on Imara than a quick trip to the mall. A county juvenile probation worker, Imara vowed to increase AIDS awareness among his young charges and helped organize two AIDS workshops for juvenile offenders.
“I was uplifted by Magic’s willingness to get out in front for AIDS education,” Imara said. “These kids are in a high-risk group.”
Even a Chicago Bulls devotee such as Marcia Biers of Toledo, Ohio, took time during a business trip to Los Angeles to look for Christmas gifts for her grandniece and grandnephew, both Johnson fans.
She came out of the store empty-handed, but not by choice. “If they hadn’t been out of the purple and yellow balls or if they’d had the right sizes we would have spent $100 on those kids,” she said.
A new item at the store, named for Johnson’s jersey number and opened nine months ago, is a special T-shirt manufactured for sale to fund an AIDS foundation Johnson is forming.
The white shirts printed in blue, green and pink show the Earth alongside Johnson playing basketball. Scattered are the words “We believe in Magic” in English and Spanish, “Worldwide Alert” and “World Awareness League.”
Although he didn’t have specific figures, store manager Lloyd Hawthorne said sales of the $19.99 shirt and other Johnson items were brisk.
The word AIDS was nowhere to be found on the fund-raising shirts or in the store.
“It’s such a scary word for some people,” Hawthorne said. “But everyone is very aware. First-time customers still come in all the time asking: ‘Where can we send money? Where can we write?’ It’s still in the front of people’s minds.”
