THE GOODS : Weather or Not : In a City Without Seasons, Why Do L.A. Stores Put Summer Merchandise in Cold Storage?

It’s easy to tell when fall has descended on Los Angeles. The green lawns of early summer go yellow. The daytime temperatures drop to a chilly 75 degrees. The backyard barbecues start at 1 p.m. instead of 6 to beat the early sunset. The leaves start turning . . . who are we kidding? What leaves?

Elsewhere around the country, fall means putting away the barbecue grills, packing away the shorts and tank tops and hauling out the parka. Here in Southern California, where finding a season is as difficult as finding a waiter who doesn’t want to act, about the only way to really tell that autumn has arrived is to go shopping.

A few weeks ago, my wife, Judy, and I did just that. We were planning a birthday party, and since the weather forecast hadn’t changed since mid-June (clear and sunny skies with highs ranging into the upper ‘80s in the valley areas), it was clear we’d be entertaining outdoors. Hence, we needed to replace our ratty old picnic table.

This seemed like a simple task. It wasn’t. Every store we went to, from Orchard Supply Hardware to Ikea to Levitz, had taken its patio furniture off the market. Every salesclerk we spoke to just shook his or her head “no” and told us picnic tables were out of season. Unable to make our purchase, we put the top down on the car for the drive home, to soak up some of the splendor of the 90-degree afternoon.

“We start selling those items in early spring,” Mary Reina, garden department manager for the Van Nuys Orchard Supply explained to me later. “By late August, we’re already running our clearances to get rid of what we have left. And by November, all our space is occupied with winter items, like firewood and fireplace screens.”

Picnic tables aren’t the only summer items that get scarce in the fall. Try finding a decent pair of shorts or even something as basic as hamburger buns or fresh lemonade. Sure you can locate most of these items somewhere, but the search becomes more complicated in November than it would be in June.

“Every summer, we have buns and barbecue sauce. We make a purchase to last a certain amount of time and when it’s gone, that’s it,” says Mike St. John, a purchasing specialist for the Trader Joe’s store in Sherman Oaks. “I have to say, though, that people have been asking for some of these summer items lately and maybe we got rid of them a little too soon this year.”

He admits “it does seem odd” that just because the calendar indicates a change of season, summer items disappear from the shelves. Because of the climate and the lifestyle here, the need for these things can occur year-round. After all, the entire Southern California culture is built around what our patron saints, the Beach Boys, referred to as endless summer. Hey, “Baywatch” isn’t based in Los Angeles for nothing!

The stores all have their reasons for abandoning the warm-weather merchandise. Take clothing, for instance. You won’t find tank tops and shorts on the shelves, says Julie McElwain, senior writer for Apparel News, because stores make few adjustments for regional climates or an unusually warm autumn.

“Nobody wants to break the traditional method,” McElwain explains. “They’re pretty firmly entrenched. You can find lighter-weight shirts in Los Angeles stores in the fall, but they’ll be long-sleeved. You won’t find the tank tops and shorts because in the store’s mind, it’s supposed to be winter.”

This could cost stores some business, but in the end, it can still be cheaper to stick with tradition and lose the summer stuff. “It’s more economical for us,” St. John says. “We get the best price on these items when they’re in season.”

Often, it’s the store’s suppliers, who are no doubt based in some frigid Northeastern clime, who dictate the decision.

“We order our merchandise from a warehouse, and we couldn’t get most of [the summer merchandise] now if we wanted to,” Reina says. “I had people in here just last week looking for patio supplies and I had to tell them, ‘I’m sorry. Those are just seasonal items.’ ”

Certainly there are legitimate autumn products that need to have some room out on the store’s floors. To have them coexisting with a barbecue grill or patio umbrella would look pretty strange, though, so something has to go.

“For us, it’s a space issue,” explains Andy Spangler, Ikea’s advertising coordinator for Southern California. “We just can’t house our entire summer collection year-round. There’s just not enough demand for it to require taking the space during fall and winter.”

That makes sense. Still, there’s an odd contradiction at work here. On the one hand, Southern Californians like to tell outsiders that this is the land of perpetual surf and sun. Who doesn’t enjoy calling a friend in Manhattan in February just to maliciously ask what the weather is like?

On the other hand, it’s simply human nature to yearn for a noticeable change of seasons. Year-round sunshine can get tedious, particularly for the tens of thousands of Californians who have moved here from more blustery regions.

Because the weather won’t cooperate, then, you have two choices. If you’re in the movie business, you get a winter home in Aspen. All that’s left for the rest of us is to create the illusion that the seasons have changed by shifting around the stuff we can buy at the store. It’s an ironic twist. In order to have proof that summer has passed into autumn, we have to go indoors.

Perhaps this is also why the malls always seem to be air-conditioned in January. Puts a winter chill in the air.

So, sure it would have been nice to have a picnic table for our party. (We ended up borrowing neighbor’s kitchen table and setting it in our yard.)

Maybe it is inconvenient to be forced to drive all over town just to find a pair of shorts for that 90-degree heat wave you know will hit just in time for New Year’s Eve.

Not to worry, though--all the critical summer gear will be available soon enough. Just wait until the first rainy, miserable day in January. That will also be the day the first bathing suits and picnic tables are on sale down at the mall.