Once Bustling, Now Bust

Ramiro Salcedo steps onto Broadway between 2nd and 3rd streets downtown. It’s the Christmas season, but you sure wouldn’t know it. No dancing mechanical toys in storefront windows. Only stereos blasting rap and hip-hop. No “Happy Holidays” greeting up on the old Million Dollar Theater marquee. No Santa anywhere.

For sure, it’s not like the old days.

For a moment, Salcedo thinks back to the Christmases of yesteryear when streetcars clanged down the boulevard, filled with carolers. When the Million Dollar hosted the Christmas movie of the season, before it closed down and reopened as a church. When Bullock’s, Robinsons, the May Company and the Broadway all thrived, rich with holiday cheer.

They’re gone now.

It looks as though the Victor Clothing Co. soon will be gone, too.

The five-story, mural-covered building that Salcedo co-owns at 242 S. Broadway--recognized the world over for its magnificent artwork: a dancing Anthony Quinn, a Mexican bride and groom, a child on a horse, and a tribute to the 1984 Olympics--is up for sale. Even if nobody buys it, plans don’t allow for the men’s store to stay open in its present form.

To many, Victor’s is not just a store, not just a building. It’s a monument to the art and history of downtown Los Angeles. But history, too, has its price: in this case, $2.6 million.

Salcedo and his partners, Paul Harter and Charles L. Fonarow, decided to call it quits for Victor’s in July--78 years to the month after it opened for business, barely inches from where it stands today.

Fonarow and Harter are, respectively, the son and son-in-law of Victor’s original owner, Leo “Sunshine” Fonarow, who passed away in 1966 and who used to broadcast a radio show in the ‘40s from the basement--with guest stars such as Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.

Salcedo, 59, started pushing a broom at Victor’s when he was 17. He never married. He never had kids. For 42 years now, Victor’s has been his life.

The murals were his idea.

And once he’d been inspired to cover and fill the store with the murals--to place them not just on the outside walls but above rows of suits and shelves of shoes and racks of underwear--Victor’s became known to all.

Victor’s and the murals have appeared in textbooks. They’ve been magnets for tour groups from across the globe: Germany, France, Scandinavia and just about everywhere else. They have amazed shoppers, captivated photographers, enthralled art enthusiasts, stopped traffic. But most of all, the colorful works have told the story, the history, have relayed the culture behind Los Angeles’ rich Mexican heritage.

*

Salcedo sits at his massive old oak desk (where Sean Penn once put his feet up to film a scene for “Colors”). He remembers when as many as 60 people would be waiting in line for merchandise, alterations, gift wrapping. The holidays were always the busiest: As many as 55 employees would be working, each waiting on five customers at a time.

These days, seven employees, two of them part-timers, come to work to find the place practically empty. Maybe 10 customers come in on a weekday, maybe 25 on a weekend. Indeed, on a recent Friday afternoon Victor’s was empty. On a payday for most people, there wasn’t a customer in sight.

Not even the latest promotion--40% off when you pay in cash--was able to bring ‘em in.

Salcedo attributes the lack of customer traffic to increased parking fees, other business closures, a less-than-safe downtown and changing times.

Still, he can’t help but remember when Victor’s was bustling. He recalls fondly when “the ladies who lunch” strolled into the store in their elegant white gloves, pillbox hats and clutch bags to shop for their men.

Victor’s claims to fame always included service (the store was named after its first employee, a janitor), its refusal to charge interest and its offers of a free shirt and tie with every suit purchased and alterations for the lifetime of the garment.

“When men gained weight--and they almost always did--we’d take the pants out for free,” Salcedo says, laughing. “When they lost it--which they rarely did--we took them back in. No charge. Never.”

But the biggest claim to fame has been the murals. They’ve become more famous than the merchandise. Juan Garduno painted the first one, “The Aztec Mural,” in 1977.

He was 13. Salcedo had spotted him on the sidewalk with a pile of artwork. Salcedo mentioned his own idea for a mural about the history of Mexico. A year later, the 12-foot-high, 120-foot-long mural was completed, painted on an inside wall above the Bronson designer suits.

Soon Salcedo had commissioned other artists to work their mural magic on canvas. Among them: John Valadez, who painted his eclectic “Broadway Mural” of a bustling Broadway filled with Latino shoppers in 1981 and “Top Hat Bridal Shop Mural” in 1985; Eloy Torrez, who did “Mural of Muralists” in 1985; Gonzalo Plascencia, who did “460 Years of Chicano History” in 1986 and smaller portraits of Latino employees who had served Spanish-speaking customers through the years.

(Victor’s was, by the way, the first downtown store to offer credit to Latinos.)

*

The most attention, though, always has gone to the exterior murals, each a full five stories high: Kent Twitchell’s “The Bride and Groom” (1972); Frank Romero’s “Nino y Caballo,” (“Child and Horse”) (1984); George Yepes, Wayne Healy and David Botello’s 1984 Olympic tribute, “El Nuevo Fuego” (“New Fire”).

And the most famous of all: Torrez’s “The Pope of Broadway” (1985), a tribute to Anthony Quinn, who grew up in East Los Angeles. The mural, showing Quinn with his arms outstretched, was commissioned as a thank-you to the Latino community for supporting Victor’s.

The murals on the walls will, of course, stay there, but the canvas works are for sale, at prices from $35,000 to $100,000.

“At one time the Smithsonian Institution was interested in ‘The Broadway Mural,’ and three or four museums across the country have always shown interest in some of the others,” Salcedo says.

“But I would love to keep the murals in Los Angeles in a private museum or in the lobby of a building. They have been such a part of this city because Victor’s has always been a part of the city.

“I would just hate to see the murals painted over,” he adds. “That would be like a knife through my heart.”

If the building doesn’t sell by March 1, a back-up plan would transform it into a mini-mall with nine to 11 partitioned shops, including a much smaller version of Victor’s menswear.

“We could at least keep the building going and maintain the exterior,” Salcedo says. Then, of course, he wouldn’t be able to retire and travel--at least, not right away.

But that’s OK.

At least he’d hold onto the murals. And maybe hold onto the past.