It was just a little east of the Anwalt Lumber facility that
still sits on the southeast corner of Pico and Sepulveda and just a few doors
west of the classic Norm’s restaurant and the old-school shoe repair store that
stood almost directly next door. I used
to love going into that ski shop with my father when I was a kid and still remember
the time he bought his red and white 200cm Kneissl White Star skis, Geze
bindings and new Nordica boots (with buckles instead of laces). The shop had
expert ski technicians that would professionally mount the bindings to the skis
for about $8.00 as I remember…but my Depression era WWII vet father was way too
thrifty not to call on his handy skills as an IBEW electrician and mount the
bindings himself with the instructions and paper jig that came in with the new
bindings.
I always thought that ski shop seemed like such a cool place
to be…and dreamed of working there some day when I reached the appropriate age.
When I was fifteen I rode my bike the two or so miles up to Jack’s ski shop one afternoon and asked the
manager Yogi Sawada for a job application. He was an avid outdoorsman and
accomplished skier…and he always seemed to have a darkly tanned face that at least
partially hid the faint scar that stretched diagonally across his face as a
result of a ski edge that whipped up into his head (back in the day before ski
breaks when skis were tethered to your ankles with leashes) during a bad racing
fall. I still day he called the house (there were no mobile phones or computers
back then) in 1977 to tell me to come by the shop. I hopped on my Schwinn
almost immediately and peddled my way up Overland and west toward the beach on
Pico to get to the shop.
Despite his reluctance to hire somebody so young, Yogi
brought me onto the Jack’s team and it wasn’t long before I was dripping Ptex into damaged ski bases
and using Nicolson files to put an edge on racing skis that you could use to
shave. There were several guys that worked in the back with me. There was this
crazy guy Bob…and dude named Tom and three cats named Mark Kleinman, Russell
Nakiama and Jay Nakamura. We’d work into the night in the back tuning and
engraving skis…and we usually stayed pretty busy in the rental shop as well…fitting
up eager skiers before their big trips up to the local resorts or maybe even
Mammoth. The older more accomplished ski technicians (Mark, Bob, Yogi and
sometimes Russell) would work on the more sophisticated mounting bench, and at
least as I recall the atmosphere in the shop was always carefree. It wasn’t
uncommon to have a couple of 12-packs in the back (I didn’t drink) and we often
brought in pizza or some other health food that would help us get through the
backlog of skis that needed to be tuned, mounted or repaired ahead of a some
holiday weekend or big holiday.
Seems like there was never a shortage of banter either. I
don’t recall all the subject matter, but seems to me we’d chat a lot about
skiing…including the then long-standing debate about long skis versus short
skis. There was this fad at the time by some short skiers called “ballet,” and
I remember my giant slalom racing buddy Mark Kleinman disgustedly summing up
the ridiculous back-n-forth by saying “if you can’t ski…do tricks.” I was
firmly in the longboard racing camp…and I’m still there today. We’d laugh, sharpen edges, drink (they’d
drink), listen to soft rock on LA’s KNX FM
radio (92.3 as I recall) and talk about approaching storm fronts and inevitable
fresh snow. We’d argue about the greatest rock-n-roll guitar player (as a
Sinatra buff…I mostly just listed to those debates), debate some Cold War
politics, critique the Los Angeles Rams and kill a ton of discussion time all
lying a lot about girls. It was a great place…and it broke my heart when Yogi
came to me in the late spring and told me the store was closing (the owner kept
the upscale Sporthaus going for a while).
Yogi, Mark, Jay and I all moved over to the new Oshman’s
Sporting goods store on the southwest corner of Pico and Sepulveda for two
seasons…and several of us made another move over to Westridge sports on Olympic
and Bundy where I worked for several years for the Brekke family (the owner Ed
loved me because of my partial Scandinavian lineage). That was a great place
too, and it wasn’t uncommon at all to have Hollywood stars like Charles Bronson,
Harvey Korman or Glenn Ford wander in. Stevie Nicks was coming in so often for
a while (she was doing this Outward Bound program with the owner’s wife) that
she called me by first name and the atmosphere in general served as a great
proving ground before moving up to Mammoth Lakes to be a real ski bum. But that’s another story for a another Friday
morning.
What’s the point of all this? None that I can think of. It’s
simply 4am on a Friday morning and amidst all the chaos in the world some old
story about my first real job in Los Angeles (after a many year newspaper
delivery gig) was the best I could do. Hope you all have a great weekend, and
if you can, do something fun with the people and pets that you love. It may
even hit 70 here in nation’s capital on Saturday, and after the winter we’ve
had…you may want to slip outdoors for a few hours too.
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