Hock Heaven : Business: Van Nuys residents say there are too many pawnshops in the area, but business operators say they have cleaned up their act.

Ray Cundiff has been prowling the pawnshop circuit up and down the West Coast for as long as he can remember. But just the other day the Bend, Ore., native hit the jumpin’ jive jackpot.

Why, that would be the city of Van Nuys, the Las Vegas of the hock-the-family-jewels world--the place where pawnsters can wander the streets like poker-meisters salivating through back-to-back casinos.

The community has a not-so-grand total of 14 pawnshops, most bunched at Van Nuys and Victory boulevards.

Cundiff, a 36-year-old construction worker, had driven to the San Fernando Valley to marry his sweetie pie, Lisa, at the Van Nuys Courthouse. And now he needed a camera to record the event and take pictures of the coast on the drive back north.

He didn’t have to go far to find his Pawnshop Nirvana.

“I just had no idea there’d be so many of them,” he said. “We don’t have any up in Bend. But you see them in areas that aren’t so great, near courthouses and all that. And if you find one, there’s usually a whole bunch of them around--normally on the shady side of the street.”

That is precisely the point about pawnshops that City Councilman Marvin Braude wants to make.

His constituents are angry. There are too many pawnshops in the area, they say. And they are not the kind of business a self-respecting community such as Van Nuys wants to have around.

Besides, residents say, some shops might get involved in the illegal gun trade, buying and selling stolen weapons. And in a city such as Los Angeles, well, that is just lighting a match near a powder keg.

This week, Braude persuaded the City Council to have the Planning Department look into the matter--possibly to require new pawnshop owners to secure a conditional-use permit so local folks will have a say before another shop opens in their neighborhood.

Now, just wait one minute here, the pawnbrokers say. They are sick and tired of the same old bad rap--that they only trade with the sleazy elements of society.

The pawnshop industry has cleaned up its act, they say. These days, there is a new breed of customers--families and newlyweds wanting to pawn not watches but Winnebagos, not pool cues but Porsches.

When California began reeling from a sluggish economy and bad credit, the pawnshops stepped in to help anxious couples and small business owners at whom the bankers turned up their noses.

“This the next-to-the-oldest industry on the planet--in China the practice has been around 800 years,” said Sam Gonen, who founded Collateral Lender in 1985. Now he has two stores in the San Fernando Valley and one in Beverly Hills, where a Mercedes and Rolls-Royce glisten in the showroom--proof-positive that the presence of a pawnshop does not ruin the neighborhood.

“We’ve filled the gap the banks leave behind,” Gonen said. “If a guy gets rejected on some loan, he just doesn’t curl up and die. He comes to us. And we don’t ruin his reputation if he defaults on any loans. We shake his hand, say thanks, tell him to come back again.”

Braude does not buy the banking comparison.

“You don’t buy and sell guns in banks,” he said. “The issue here is the proximity of these pawnshops to residential neighborhoods. And their effects on those neighborhoods. And they’re having a negative effect. We’ve got the complaints to prove it.”

Cesar Salgado does not see himself as any covert gun salesman. The manager of Collateral Lender in Van Nuys says they fingerprint anyone who sells or hocks an item in his store.

On a recent day, his tiny shop bustled with business. Families, couples, the solitary shopper--all browsing under the watchful eye of Chester the Rottweiler. For added security, there are a handgun and cuffs behind the counter.

On the walls and behind the counter were the typical pawnshop fare: golf clubs, computers, watches, camera lenses, chain saws, handguns, shotguns, rifles, video games, pink and orange electric guitars.

There was also the collection of monster masks created by a Hollywood prop designer who was between movies and needed some extra cash.

Salgado regularly gets visits from real estate brokers who pawn their cars for enough cash to close a deal. Or merchants who cannot make payroll. So they hock their Rolls for a few weeks to make ends meet--taking advantage of loans up to $300,000.

Salgado said no one knows exactly why so many pawnshops have sprung up in Van Nuys. Maybe it is the proximity to the courthouse and its accompanying foot traffic.

“But when there’s money to be made, new places are going to open up. If I’m a businessman, I’m going to go where the action is.”

But operators such as Salgado agree with Braude that there are some unscrupulous pawnshop operators out there who are not members of the Collateral Lenders Assn. of California.

Limiting the number would make his job easier and limit the options of customers who wander the pawnshop strip trying to make their best deal.

But no matter what happens, the owners know, pawnshops are here to stay.

Because, like it or not, the market is there for the fast-cash crowd. For the mother whose son was murdered and needed to raise money for his funeral. Or the guy who wanted instant cash for his $100 bill signed by Muhammad Ali.

Sighing, they know they will get the folks who never learn that the pawn men do not accept anything without a solid market for resale. Or anything that needs to be fed.

To prove his point, Gonen likes to tell the old pawnshop joke about the lady who for 13 straight years made interest payments on a hocked necklace--until one day when the sympathetic pawnshop owner just gave it back to her.

“Surprised,” Gonen said, “the lady leaves the store, only to return with the necklace a few minutes later.

“She walks up to the counter like the guy’s never seen her before. She looks him straight in the eye and says: ‘Mister, I’d like to hock this necklace.’

“Sure, it’s just a joke. But I deal with people like that little old lady every day. It’s people like her that make the pawnshop world go ‘round.”