Bedford Falls, Ca.

If battling holiday crowds at the mall is causing undue anxiety and anger, you could be suffering from that most chic of the recently diagnosed disorders: Christmas Rage. Fortunately, relief is 10 miles north of downtown L.A., in the cozy village of Montrose.

Montrose is home to one of the last retail centers in Southern California made up almost entirely of quaint mom-and-pop shops. From Nancy’s Fancy to Billy’s Ski & Sport to Tom’s Toys, one can easily imagine George Bailey walking out of any of the stores along the three blocks of Honolulu Avenue that make up main street Montrose. Lack of parking has effectively kept out the major chains and spared the 85-year-old town from the retail gentrification that’s taken over similar neighborhood shopping districts, preserving places that probably wouldn’t survive a harsher business environment. How else to explain three barbershops (poles included) within two blocks of each other; a ‘30s-era bowling alley that has but eight lanes; and a single-table restaurant that serves traditional holiday fare year-round to eight people per sitting, three nights a week?

Christmas shopping in Montrose is so perfect it borders on the surreal. A walk underneath the 50,000-odd lights that illuminate Honolulu Avenue, with church choirs caroling from store to store, not to mention a couple of town criers working the street along with the occasional elf or mime, would seem to push dangerously close to Yuletide overkill. But the genuine small-town charm of the place simply defies cynicism.

Honolulu Avenue will probably never be home to the Gap or the Olive Garden, but at least one local thinks that being unattractive to corporate-owned chains has enabled Montrose to cultivate a nurturing shopping environment. “Merchants here care as much about the people they serve as they do in making money. Show me a mall that can say that,” says Frank Roberts, the 77-year -old owner of the Candle Tree gift shop, who, like every other shopkeeper in town, works behind the register.

Says Jane Humphrey, who invites locals to sit in a rocking chair and read to children in her Honolulu Avenue bookstore, “Montrose is quaint because, unlike a place like Carmel, no one here really knows that it’s quaint.”