Quaint in the best sense of the word

Sierra Madre is a fine place to be when a rainstorm hits. In the foothills, weather is often a bit more dramatic than it is in the valleys or the flats -- come December, the rain falls hard and cold and sudden. In minutes, the steep streets have whitecaps in their gutters.

A recent rain came up fast even by Sierra Madre standards. A narrow edge of mist along the hilltops swiftly became a mass of dark clouds that swept across a Christmas blue sky as if summoned by Peter Jackson. For a few seconds, Baldwin Avenue, one of the town’s main streets, was split in two, evenly divided between sun and storm. Then lightning dutifully flashed and rain rattled onto concrete and car roofs like a huge sack of marbles split open.

In the Four Seasons Tea Room, the sound of strings and harpsichord was submerged for a moment and a group of women in holiday sweaters peered over their cups, through a window gone blind with rain. Four more women dashed up the steps of the converted bungalow, their pink and red hats wilted only slightly beneath their umbrellas.

Members of a Pasadena chapter of the Red Hat Society -- ladies of a certain age who meet occasionally for fun and mischief and, very often, tea -- they were here to exchange holiday gifts, which included membership pins of fabric shaped to look like red flowers with tiny teapots attached.

“Our oldest member is 85,” said Erma Taylor Stark from under the garlanded brim of her hat. She was holding a purse shaped like a pink watering can. “And she just got a tattoo.”

Sierra Madre takes pride in its size -- fewer than 12,000 people. But just because a town’s quaint -- there’s an old-fashioned revolving pie rack in the window of the PepperTree Grill -- doesn’t mean it’s backward. Bean Town, the local coffeehouse, offers smoothies and all the obligatory baked goods -- biscotti, softball-sized muffins -- and at Savor the Flavor, a specialty food and gifts emporium, the hot items this year are olive dishes, which have actually sold out, and olive oil bottles to be used to hold dish soap.

Braving the rain, one woman ducked in and breathlessly inquired after a bottle that would hold both oil and vinegar. They didn’t have it; neither did they have just “plain chocolate” that another woman desired. “We only have fancy chocolate left,” said clerk Lori Lama, laughing. “Look at that,” she added, peering through the window at the rain. The drops had turned again, now fat and determined, battering flat the red and yellow leaves splayed on the sidewalk.

Tea Room owner Kelly Santos has lived in Sierra Madre for 16 years; she and her mother opened the tea room six years ago. Santos thinks the town is pretty much the same as it was when she was in high school. “Although I remember when Bean Town was tiny and now it’s huge,” she said.

A couple doors south of the tea room, Bean Town is reachable with a few splash-hurried steps. Inside, there are white metal-topped kitchen tables, several sofas, a computer station, a bookshelf full of board games, several piles of newspaper and, on this day, about a dozen folks studying, talking and watching the rain.

“You look like you’re in Minnesota,” said manager Rod Diener to a man who walked in wearing a windbreaker and a red ski cap.

“Well, the wind kicked up and then it was hailing, so ... “ the main shrugged; he was a big man and it was a big movement that whistled with the fabric of his coat.

On the counter by the cash registers there was a little jar with a sign requesting donations for the “Snowman Fund.” According to Diener, each year a man named Dave Forrester goes up into the mountains and gets three truckloads of snow so he can make a snowman in Kersting Court on Christmas Day. Last year, there was no snow to be found and so Forrester bought a bunch of shaved ice in Monrovia and made snow.

“Cost him like 400 bucks,” said Diener, “so we thought we’d help him out this year. Only,” he looked out the window where the rain had blown itself long and thin, the kind of rain with a bite to it, “it looks like there’ll be plenty of snow this year.”

Kersting Court is the heart of downtown Sierra Madre, an island at the intersection of Baldwin and Sierra Madre Boulevard. A week before Christmas, it was occupied by a larger-than-life-size manger scene awaiting the arrival of Baby Jesus. But there was plenty of room yet for a good-sized snowman.

As 2 o’clock ticked on to 3, Bean Town filled up with pretty girls in blue jeans and pea coats and couples panting a bit because they’d run through the wet. Entering, everyone blinked a bit, automatically smiled at the warmth and the dry, and their cheeks were red like they should be at Christmastime in a small town, even in Southern California.

There is something about the holidays that cries out for time spent in a small town, for the “I love you, Bedford Falls” moment of lights and weather and storefronts. Sierra Madre is pretty close to perfect for that, though there are others around too -- Montrose, Monrovia, South Pasadena all have charming shopping districts and the feeling of dug-in residence sought after now by commercial architects and designers.

In these towns the ambience is home-grown, which means it’s lovely and slightly weird, like the image of Sierra Madre’s famous 108-year-old Wisteria, emblazoned on everything from T-shirts to the holiday gift wrap, like the weather that comes up suddenly and is whisked away just as fast.

Moments after a deluge, the streets were glazed with sunshine and in the west, unbelievably enough, a double rainbow arced, ending somewhere in the hills wet with winter. Chances are not good around here for snow, even in the hills, even at Christmastime, but the rain’ll do.