Mirror image: Departure of stores offers chance for Hermosa Beach to reckon with evolving identity
Roy Dunbar, of Dunbar’s Waterbeds, Berl Pierce and Hermosa Beach Police Officer Don Finley in front of Hair, Pierce’s Hermosa Avenue barbershop, in the early 1970s. Photo Three women pick through crowded racks of clothing. They pause every so often, their mirthful laughter suggesting finds somewhere between outrageous and hilarious. “Imagine this on Chuck!” said Mary Stansbury Wilson, holding up a multi-colored silk affair, reds and blacks cascading down the shirt’s long sleeves in nothing resembling a pattern. It was the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, and the three friends were among the customers to pass through the doors of the last day of business for Granny Takes a Trip, a vintage clothing store on Hermosa Avenue that shuttered recently after 30 years in Hermosa Beach. The store, along with each of the other businesses on the block, closed following a change in the building’s ownership. Developer and real estate agent Raju Chhabria purchased the parcel on the west side of Hermosa Avenue stretching from 14th Street to 15th Court in January of last year. Chhabria, who also owns the land on the other side 15th Court where the H20 Hermosa Hotel is now under construction, plans to…
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