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Blog Entry 3 of 31 Musings, Ramblings and Scout Stuff

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How changed is my intersection

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Contributed by: Joshua Godinez on 5/18/2007

I was reading Robert Greene's blog entries about his memories in the Valley ( http://valleynews.com/~HowGreenWasMyValley) and realized that I had a few of my own so I thought I'd put some things down.

Mission Hills used to be called Dennis Park according to a nice lady in our neighborhood who said she was on the neighborhood committee to rename the area. The previous name referred to the name of a building development and it was just applied to the general area. The last vestige of Dennis Park was removed last year. The Dennis Park Bakery at the corner of Devonshire and Sepulveda experienced a fire and never recovered. They had the best buttercream frosting and were the first in the area to feature cakes with edible pictures painted on rice paper. The store sits empty now waiting for a new tenant.

I guess I'm going to talk about all the stuff in that general area that I can remember. Just around the corner from the bakery was Miller's Outpost. I don't know if that chain exists any more, but it was basically the same thing as the Gap, just a general clothing store. During the 1992 L.A. riots which didn't really come to Mission Hills, somebody broke the windows. I don't know if it was coincidence, but the boarded up windows remained boarded up forever until Hollywood Video bought the space and set up shop. They don't seem to be faring too well against the Blockbuster Video across the street.

The Blockbuster Video store used to be the Wherehouse Video and Music store. For a long time it was a great place to go get the latest albums, then it only sold and rented movies, then it just went out of business, but was replaced with a Blockbuster Video store. I thought it wouldn't last since Wherehouse went out of business. Now it's one of the busiest places at that intersection.

The nearby Ralphs grocery store used to be a Hughes. Back in 1987 when I moved into the area it was the only place that was open past 9 p.m. The Vons across the street closed down. All of the other stores closed down. Even the gas stations closed by 9 p.m. Hughes, however, was open 24 hours a day. It was what made them different. Okay, the adult book store and 7-11 also stayed open 24 hours, but you couldn't do anything there. For a brief while in the early 90's there was a 24 hour a day craze and almost all the grocery stores started staying open 24 hours a day and it even extended to the McDonalds and Taco Bells nearby. That fad ended after about a year and Hughes went back to being the only one until Ralphs bought it. Shortly after that the Ralphs started closing at 10 p.m. every night. What a change.

I don't remember what some of the smaller shops used to be, but where the Washington Mutual Bank is used to be a drug store. I could never figure out how they changed a drug store into a bank, but they did. So, no more Sav-On or CVS for us. Have to go across the stree to Rite-Aid (which used to be Thrifty Drug).

The tire store next to Rite Aid just shut down. I can't remember what their name was: Magic or something. It used to be a Firestone shop, but whoever ran it was doing bad repairs to the cars and everyone stopped going there. Shortly afterwards it shut down and turned into the new store which is now the former store.

Mission Hills Auto Sales next to the 76 gas station (Sonny is still there and probably will be for the 25 years, too) was purchased by Nissan and turned into Superior Nissan. They just built a new dealership up at Brand and Sepulveda across the street from Hamer Toyota. So, Superior shuttered the old building for a while, but reopened it recently as a used car lot.

We used to have a real-live liquor store next to the Safari room, but it closed about 6 years ago and turned into a flower shop, which closed about 2 years ago and turned into a check-cashing place.

The Millie's restaurant which has a real neighborhood feel to it used to be a Sizzler restaurant back in 1985. When I moved into the area I had about 1 month to go there before they shut down. I missed my chance. Oh well.

In that same center was a tailor shop named Mr. Al's. The owners kept changing, but the name stayed the same. Next door was a used book store with musty old volumes (I got some vintage Asimov's there). And next to that was Joy's cleaners. Joy and the book store sold to a brand new dry cleaner last year who refurbished everything and promptly burned down taking Mr. Al's out with it. Fortunately the other businesses weren't enveloped, too, but I think Mr. Al (white, Asian, male, female, whichever face he has now) won't be coming back.

They've built a new strip mall at the Devonshire off-ramp of the 405. It used to be a Shell station. No news on who is moving there, but I think a dentist is the only one. Across the street they turned a house into a 3-story office building. I've never seen that before. Across from that was the Le Triumphe French restaurant. I never tried it out and then I didn't get a chance to because it's now the Buon Gusto Italian restaurant. That was about 10 years ago and besides we have the L'Affaire Cafe up the street. Who needs 2 French restaurants anyways?

We're really on the map now because we have our own Starbucks in the same strip center as the Buon Gusto. Strangely we also have a Subway which seems superfluous since we've had a Subway about 4 blocks away for the last 20 years. People must like sandwiches because they put in a Quizno's 2 blocks away as well as a Papa John's pizza place on the site of the old Washington Mutual (the one that moved across the way and converted the drug store to a bank). Of course, you remember that the Washington Mutual used to be a Great Western bank.

It seems the only piece of property that hasn't changed is the empty lot next to the post office. Of course, that's only true 11 months out of the year. In December the Boy Scouts set up the Christmas tree lot. I should know. It's my troop that does it. Even that is fairly recent because we used to set-up over at the Mission Hills Community Church on Lemona until they decided that they couldn't spare the space any more.

Here I was going to talk about the Van Nuys drive-in and the Winnetka drive-in and the Fedco all of which are gone, but then I realized I had plenty to talk about just at the intersection of Sepulveda and Devonshire. How about that?

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