City Stores Are a Sign of the Times

One city’s trash is another person’s treasure.

At least, that’s what the Los Angeles City Council hopes.

In a move to make a few bucks for the city’s empty coffers and even inspire some civic pride, officials are scrounging around warehouses and scrap heaps to find bits and pieces of municipal history to sell, most of it right off our streets.

Need an old parking meter in the driveway to discourage those unwanted guests? How about a beat-up “Sunset Boulevard” sign to add to the children’s pictures hanging in the hall? Or a handful of dusty pavement markers to show the way to the bathroom?

Such items will probably be available for purchase by next year at a city store to be set up Downtown in the Los Angeles Mall. With it, the City of Angels will discover what thousands of us already know to be a tried-and-true method of drumming up a little spare change: hold a garage sale.

The idea for the store hit City Council aide Morrie Goldman when he and a co-worker went south to attend a Dodgers-Padres game and saw San Diego’s city store. The store carried other municipal refuse, like old fire hoses, but made the biggest splash by turning mundane driving and parking instructions into hip home decor.

“We said, ‘Why the hell doesn’t Los Angeles have this?’ ” said Goldman, chief legislative deputy to Councilman Mike Hernandez, who proposed the program last spring. “This is the second-largest city in the country.”

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Despite Los Angeles’ size, and its presumably large cache of junk that could make for hot novelty items--especially from Hollywood--the city is a Johnny-come-lately to the world of municipal merchandising.

West Covina opened a store, dubbed City Haul, last year, and now boasts a gift catalogue that it mails to out-of-state customers. (A Mexico City restaurateur just bought 10 vintage fire hydrants for $1,000 apiece.)

Glendale went on the market with salvaged goods earlier this month. Lakewood christened a store last week. Residents of Long Beach will get a shot at owning city property starting this Friday, and Culver City plans to set up shop during the holiday rush. Even the hamlet of Hemet is in business.

“It’s not going to solve all our budget (problems), but it’s one tool in our bag,” said Tom Marston of the Glendale city manager’s office. “The positive thing is that it’s not a tax increase.”

For the new entrepreneurs, the stores are a double source of income: from the proceeds of the sales themselves and the city’s share of the sales tax.

Officials lick their chops at the prospect of turning a profit like the one in San Diego, where the original store in City Hall was so successful that it spawned three outlets in local malls. Since 1991, the shops have pulled in more than $1.3 million.

“The most popular items have been various types of street signs,” said San Diego Deputy City Manager Bruce Herring. “We have No Parking signs, a sign that says Swimsuit Optional, signs that say No Shooting Within City Limits.

“A store employee goes through the dump outside the city sign shop every Monday morning and takes them down to the store.”

It can be a dirty enterprise in more ways than one. Like any spring-cleaning, scavenging for city goods sometimes produces skeletons in the closet, markers of a not-so-pretty past.

“There might be signs,” Marston said, choosing his words carefully, “that say people of a certain race or a certain ethnicity can’t use a certain park” or other public facility. “While that is certainly history, we prefer it to remain history, although it might be salable.”

The signs that pass muster for Glendale’s City Shoppe are inoffensive, sometimes amusing and not too cheap.

There’s the “No Spitting” warning that invokes a 1907 city ordinance ($19.95). A speed limit posting goes for $24.95. Shoppers can also shell out $195 for an old but never-used Glendale city limits sign crafted back when the population was 185,678--about 5,000 more than at last count.

Randi and Ken Byers of Valencia recently eyed a refurbished parking meter, painted blood-red and adorned with a $225 price tag.

“Set it outside,” Randi Byers whispered to her husband. “That way you’d never get a ticket again.”

When Los Angeles opens its doors for business, it should have a ready supply of retired signs that would fetch far less money in the scrap-metal market.

Of the 700,000 street signs throughout the city, 10%--or 70,000--must be replaced every year, said David Royer of the Department of Transportation.

Some are too worn to survive any more exposure. Others are pilfered or defaced.

Most prone to theft and vandalism are the city’s 41,000 stop signs, which are within easier reach of taggers and purloiners than placards posted higher up. Also popular with thieves are signs bearing women’s names, more likely stolen by lovesick sweethearts than the women themselves.

A sense of history appeals to some.

Last year, after the City Council renamed a portion of Sunset Boulevard and all of Brooklyn Avenue for the late Cesar Chavez, the Sunset and Brooklyn street signs in the area quickly started to disappear.

“As soon as they knew we were going to take them down, people came out and got to them before we did,” Royer says.

Most street signs in Los Angeles are no older than today’s teen-agers, but a few date as far back as the 1920s. In the industrial parts of East Los Angeles, Royer says, many of the signs have been around since World War II, manufactured out of a durable porcelain that city sign-makers reverted to a decade ago because the old markers have lasted so well.

But before you go out and buy a street sign, Royer has one warning: They’re bigger than you think.

Although they look relatively small from your vantage point behind the wheel, a standard street sign is 10 inches high and three feet long. Parking signs can be larger than newborn babies. Speed-limit placards are big enough to do any picket-waving protester proud.

“When it’s eight feet up on a post, it looks small. But when you’re holding the sign in your hand,” Royer said, “it’s huge.”

Now if only the profits follow suit.