Used to Be Lloyd's Market
Used to Be Lloyd's Market, originally uploaded by lavocado@sbcglobal.net.
I spent another evening with the Mar Vista Historical Society. On the way there, I photographed this sadly vacant building. In my youth, this had been Lloyd's Market. There had also been a nursery school at the far end. Mom took me to the nursery school one day, but since I didn't want to let her out of my sight, the teacher said I was not ready. Many years later, Lloyd's was the place my mother sent me to buy things she ran out of between her regular shopping trips at the Safeway down the hill. This was before the existence of the 7/11. It was two or three short blocks from home. I walked there barefoot. One of the men who worked there called me "The Barefoot Contessa" after a movie I had not seen. No one guessed that the Barefoot Contessa would later become a cooking show. Another time he called me Madame Bovary, a book I had not read. I did have a vague idea of what Madame Bovary was about, though.
Lloyd's was more than a convenience store. It had produce and a live butcher. We could have bought all our groceries there, but the Safeway must have been cheaper. They were still business when I moved away. In 1977 it became a Mrs. Gooch's Health Food Store. the first in the chain, later bought out by Whole Foods. Mrs. Gooch was Sandy Gooch, a real person. She was much more of a purist than Whole Foods, and sold nothing with white flour, refined sugar, chocolate, alcohol, caffeine, artificial flavors or preservatives. She opened several branch stores over the next ten years. The store was very popular and there were traffic jams at the parking lot entrance.
It's been vacant since last summer.