Hand-painted 1969 sales counter and other items from 1969-1987 chain are on permanent display at Van Nuys pop-culture museum. Columnist/record store fan David Allen visits.
, by turns solemn or wacky. The showstopper is a vast room of neon signs from old businesses — Ben Frank’s, Pioneer Chicken, the Palomino Club — and two of western tailor Nudie Cohn’s custom automobiles.
TV tie-in lunch boxes, pinball machines, radio station bumper stickers, McDonald’s toys and memorabilia from second-banana actors Johnny Crawford and Jack Oakie all rest cheek-to-jowl in a kind of cultural cacophony. “It’s a pop culture museum of Southern California,” docent Taylor Avarista told me. “Every gimmicky item works here. We’re not the Ronald Reagan Museum. We’re not the Getty.” That’s true. Unlike at the Getty, I parked about 20 feet from the Valley Relics Museum’s entrance. No tram necessary. Now, I have no experience with Licorice Pizza, having arrived in Southern California a few years after the chain expired, but record stores are among my favorite places. When I’m in the Valley, my go-to shop isThat’s why, after marveling at news of the Licorice Pizza donation on social media, I made a point of checking it out in person over Labor Day weekend. It struck me that a lot of you would be interested as well.The centerpiece is the sales counter from the original Licorice Pizza store in Long Beach, used from the start in 1969 to the early 1970s. It’s not a fragment of the true cross — although it is likewise made of wood — but it’s a marvelous emblem of its era. The battered counter has hand-painted images on the customer side: the logo from the Rolling Stones album “Flowers” and the cover of the Beatles’ “Rubber Soul,” both 1966 releases; Eric Burdon from the Animals in profile; and nods to Blue Cheer, Iron Butterfly and the Fugs. Heavy, man.“It’s so ’69,” Avarista enthused. “We were ecstatic. It blew us away. We wanted to make a special section for Licorice Pizza.” The hand-painted sales counter from Licorice Pizza’s Long Beach store in 1969 features visual hallmarks of the era, including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and a peace sign. Painted by Shirley Dewberry, the counter was saved all these years by Licorice Pizza founder Jim Greenwood. He met museum founder Tommy Gelinas, toured the museum last summer and subsequently offered up the counter and other items. Those include the original hand-painted logo, also by Dewberry, and cash register; a tote bag, T-shirt and sweater; crates for cassette tapes and 7-inch singles; and an employee name tag with the store’s emblem, a woman holding a steaming record as if delivering a pizza to your table. A 1970s advertisement — with the motto, “Remember, you always get your music nicer at Licorice Pizza” — lists 11 stores from Orange County to the Valley, including Canoga Park, North Hollywood and Reseda. The chain eventually had 35 locations, including three in the Inland Empire: Upland , Riverside and San Bernardino . My thanks to Patty Edwards, Ruth McCormick and Sue Payne, respectively, for finding the addresses for me. The museum also got a manager’s binder with the agenda for a 1981 meeting, a personnel list with phone extensions and a sales guide for the Christmas season. “You should see a whole new group of people shopping for pre-recorded music this year — as gifts!” the sales guide reads in part. “If you add to that the great new releases like Neil Young, Doobie Bros., Rod Stewart, the Cars, Barbra Streisand, etc., Licorice Pizza becomes one of the best gift-shopping places around.”
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