The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Not Just a Two-Wheeler: 'I can't afford a Ferrari, but I might as well have a nice bike,' says Willow Glen Bike Shop owner Reginald Caselli of his handmade $6,000 titanium cycle. Customers often call on Caselli for the latest cycling news.

At the old Avenue businesses, everybody knows your name

'I know more about them than their wives do,' Elite clerk says of loyal customers

By Rebecca Wallace

The color scheme is orange. Or at least at first blush, everything seems dominated by the tangerine counters at Elite Cleaners. Clerk Geri Coleman emerges from a forest of plastic-sheathed clothes and brightly greets all her customers by name.

Crowned by its towering old-fashioned sign, the Willow Street business has been open for about 20 years, says Christopher Yi, who has owned Elite with his wife, Joan, for about five years. Ten-year Elite veteran Coleman says the building housed a different cleaning business for some 20 years prior to that.

If there are 800,000 stories in this city, Coleman seems to know them all. Gesturing at a giggling customer, she says, "Her husband brought her in here for our approval before he married her." Then, with a sly look: "Some customers, I know more about them than their wives do."

Coleman, 52, says she's a therapist, guidance counselor and friend to Elite's loyal customers, and they help her out as well. "We're like Mommy," she says, nodding at seamstress Santina Caruso, a seven-year Elite employee.

Willow Glen has remained a place where business people get concerned if their Lincoln Avenue neighbors don't come in to work, and schoolchildren huddle inside Elite in the morning if it's too cold to wait for the bus on the corner, Coleman says.

"It's the people that make Willow Glen," she says. "People go to Bill's [Cafe] because they like Bill ... and they like personal service, like 'Good morning, Bob. How are you, Janet?' "

While chain stores, yuppies and hip haunts pop up along Lincoln, a cluster of older businesses at the corner of Lincoln and Willow hangs on to loyal customers by focusing on what each does best: service.

From the 14-year-old May's Beauty Salon to the 61-year-old Willow Glen Bike Shop, these businesses value the personal touch over trendiness.

Outside Elite, a towheaded boy in the back seat of a car waves at Coleman through the window. She waves back and says, "To work here, you will never be alone ... and if you need help, [Glen residents] will help you."

No 'push' here

Down the street, in a large, cheery building that smells of rubber and motor oil, Dale Hundrieser, owner of the 13-year-old Winchester Auto Parts, agrees. When Kragen Auto Parts--a big chain unlike the locally owned Winchester--opened on Lincoln in 1988, Winchester stayed successful by continuing to emphasize service, Hundrieser says.

Hundrieser, who studied auto repair and dreamed of becoming a repairman until he discovered he was allergic to grease, says customers benefit from his and his employees' experience with vehicles. "We can tell people how to install parts and tell them what went wrong," he says.

Winchester also combated the competition by increasing its wholesale business to auto repair shops, he says.

Sometimes customers come to Winchester for advice and then buy parts more cheaply at Kragen, says Hundrieser. "That kind of hurts, but it's part of the business. We keep pushing service and hope they'll come back."

Larry Toney, who has owned Tri-Me Appliance with Marie Brasil for 25 years, says he now does more business over the phone. "Half our business is phone-in," he says. "We're selling to the next generation now."

His salespeople don't work on commission, he says: "You don't get the push around here." And the appliance store is a local landmark of sorts, with its only advertising the bright old-fashioned ads painted on the front windows.

The good with the bad

Pulling on rubber gloves and pushing up the sleeves of his black turtleneck, Reginald Caselli picks up a rag and wipes corrosion off the wheels of a 1973 white Gitane bicycle just like the one he had when he was 16. The owner of the Willow Glen Bike Shop has lived in the Glen his entire life and shopped at the store when he was younger.

Like the other nearby business owners, Caselli says the influx of yuppie businesses to Willow Glen has its ups and downs.

"It used to be a bedroom community of old people," he says of the Glen. "Then their kids grew up. My parents bought their home for $16,000, and it's now worth half a million."

He frowns and says: "It's more affluent. I don't know if that's good or bad. The little guys like us aren't going to be able to stay here; rents are going up. We get customers from all over looking for the kind of personal attention we can give, not being a chain. But that's slowly going away."

That attention includes imparting knowledge, says Glen resident and longtime customer Bernie Silvera. People often call Caselli for information on bicycle racing and racing history, Silvera says: "He's the only guy in the Bay Area who knows that much."

The changes on the Avenue have brought their perks. Elite owner Yi agrees that the trendy new businesses do make the Avenue more lively, and the added foot traffic brings in more business. And some of those feet belong to high-tech types, among whom the mountain-biking craze has really caught on, Caselli says.

"It's like having strangers in your neighborhood," Elite clerk Coleman says of chain stores, "but we need them to keep going."

As the Avenue has grown, efforts fighting graffiti and bringing in trees and benches have brightened the strip, says Vic Abboud, owner of the 16-year-old Vic's Coin Shop.

Big-city problems

Besides competition from chains, other problems arising from the changes on Lincoln include skyrocketing rents and insufficient parking, the older-business owners say.

Tri-Me Appliance owner Toney says he and store co-owner Brasil own their property, the Baron Hans Upholstery and May's Beauty Salon buildings and a duplex in the back--and keep the rents low.

"If we didn't own the property ourselves, we wouldn't be in this business. Appliances don't generate enough money," he says. "If my [tenants] move out, we'll raise rents comparable to the area."

May Lin, owner of May's Beauty Salon, says Avenue traffic has increased steadily--along with speeding, which makes it hard for older people to cross the street.

Rising rents and other factors have caused many local businesses to leave the Avenue over the years. The owners of the businesses at Lincoln and Willow list many that they miss, including Oliver's Saddle Shop, the Garden Theater, Pizza Village, Ed's Hobby Shop and Bergmann's.

Lin says Oliver's moved away because its rent tripled. "That's a terrible thing to do to a neighborhood," she says.

Abboud says he was especially unhappy to see Bergmann's go: "We knew everybody there, and they had a little of everything."

To preserve the surviving small-town warmth of the Glen, people need to support local merchants, the business owners say.

"Four or five older merchants keep Willow Glen together," says Coleman, naming the owners of Bill's Cafe, Casa Casa, La Villa Delicatessen and Blaine's Lamps. She adds that she hopes they'll be able to stay here for a long time to come.

"People here support their own neighborhood [by shopping here]," she says. "Willow Glen is a feeling of involvement. When you lose that, you lose the town."

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