A Bitter Sting for the Bee Hive
They have been friendly neighbors for more than 30 years now, the two little businesses at the southwest corner of Ventura and Van Nuys boulevards. The Sherman Oaks Newsstand, anchored to the exterior wall since 1949, is a source of out-of-town papers and periodicals that range from the Yale Review to Juggs. Next to it is the Bee Hive Beauty Supply, which is also known for its rich variety of stock.
“We get a lot of calls from other beauty suppliers,” Scott Schiffman boasts. “Someone will ask for something that no one has ever heard of. And it’s: ‘Go to the Bee Hive. They’ll have it.’ ”
This is where Scott Schiffman grew up. Back in 1964, he was the 7-year-old boy who scratched his name in wet concrete out back. He played in the alley and helped in the store. He remembers Clint Eastwood seeking his father’s counsel on how to color his graying whiskers, and child star Kristy McNichol brandishing her first MasterCard.
Everything but the walls and the memories came crashing down Jan. 17. A pile of plastic bottles three feet deep oozed a vivid, fragrant honey of peroxide, shampoo, nail polish, polish remover, creams, colognes and makeup. Before long, inspectors put a red tag on the door. Customers who call now hear a recording saying, “Believe it or not, we’re still closed,” and Schiffman’s buoyant promise that he’ll soon announce the Bee Hive’s new location.
Leaving is hard. What makes it harder, it seems, is that the Newsstand is squeezing the Bee Hive out.
*
Perhaps that’s putting it too harshly. Although Schiffman felt bitter a few weeks ago, he says he doesn’t feel that way now. He doesn’t think his landlord or his publicity-shy neighbor means to force him out. Now he reserves his anger for the Small Business Administration, wondering why his loan is taking so damn long to process.
There are a million stories in the quaking city and this is just one. But amid such upbeat news as rebuilt freeways and reopening stores, the tale of the Bee Hive is a reminder that for many others the recovery is a slow and painful process.
This may be especially true in this stretch of Ventura Boulevard that cuts through Sherman Oaks, a community built upon the soft, shaky earth where the Los Angeles River used to stray before it was tamed by concrete channels. Merchants who’ve been fortunate enough to reopen must cope with the fact that the quake forced much of their old clientele to move out of condos and apartment buildings nearby. The more unfortunate are those such as Schiffman, who realizes that every day the Bee Hive remains closed, another customer may shift loyalties.
Schiffman speaks like someone from the old school, a businessman who prefers handshakes to contracts. Having grown up in the business, he remembers entrepreneurs who started out by mixing potions in their garage. The billion-dollar industry of today, he laments, is run by “people my age with MBAs who look at everything as dollars and cents.” He also misses the old village atmosphere along Ventura Boulevard. He remembers the deli market that occupied the corner where Tower Records is now. “Before you would have a diner,” he says. “Now you have Starbucks.”
And he misses Charlie, the old landlord “who was like an uncle to me.” Charlie, he says, had once assured his father that if he ever were to sell the building, it would be to him. Scott figured he had inherited the promise.
Charlie died last year. After the quake, Scott was stunned to learn that Charlie’s widow had agreed to sell the building to the 70-year-old owner of the Newsstand on the condition that the structure could be saved. And then he learned that his neighbor, starved for space, would need the back portion of the Bee Hive--so much space, Schiffman says, the Bee Hive has no choice but to move.
*
Schiffman shared the story as we as sat in two salon chairs. The Bee Hive wasn’t the smartest place to be, but there was no aftershock. Schiffman speculates that Charlie, in his last months, decided that the Newsstand’s owner, after 45 years, deserved first dibs. The anger has passed. “But when I think about leaving this space,” he adds, “I get knots in my stomach.”
No use crying over spilled shampoo. There have been blessings, too. In a couple of weeks, Schiffman’s first child will be born. His wife had been shaken so severely in the quake that they worried they might lose the baby, but everything is fine. Things could be a lot worse. But things would be better, Schiffman adds, if the SBA gets its act together.
We walked out the back door, past the Newsstand, and stopped at the corner beneath one of the plastic bee-girls who decorate the dull yellow facade. She had long dark lashes and pink lips. Thirty years later, she was still smiling.
