The Beat Museum, and That Time I Tried to Save Our Corner Candy Store

by Jerry Cimino

Last week I found a photograph I haven’t seen in my entire adult life. I was going through a large box of family photographs I shipped from my mom and dad’s house seven years ago, after they both passed away. It took me quite a few moments to process this particular image. At first I recognized a single face, my brother’s, but soon began to recollect other faces I knew, even though I no longer remember many of the names. After about thirty seconds the memories came flooding back.

On the street I grew up on in Baltimore, the corner candy store was the center of our universe. Prior to starting kindergarten, everything in my world was centered within a one block radius between my family’s house and that little store sitting on the corner, run by a little old man who treated all the neighborhood children with kindness. I’m sure they sold other things, but for my friends and I it was all about the penny candies. We could buy those anytime we found a spare penny in a pocket. 

In addition to fueling our purchasing power, the store functioned as the hub of all social activity. We played stickball on the street where the car is parked. On the sidewalk in front of the store, the neighborhood girls would sit and play jacks. The boys would march around like we were tough, and many times a fight would break out right in front of that storefront, with the old storekeeper coming out to pull apart the two ruffians who were chasing away his foot traffic. 

One day we all woke up to find the corner candy store had disappeared overnight. There had to be a reason for it, and I’m sure the adults knew why, but for the kids in the neighborhood it was a shocking life occurrence. For such an important focal point in all our lives to be suddenly and devastatingly ripped away… something like that had never happened to any of us before.

We started marshaling our forces. We were determined to do something about this (as only kids might believe they can), even though we didn’t know what exactly we could do. So we enlisted the aid of our older brothers and sisters, and in very short order, under the guidance of the older children, we came together and formed a campaign to bring back the candy store. We made a plan to raise money to give to the owner so he could reopen our one and only public haunt. We arranged a raffle, we donated our toys, we set up a donation station, all in an effort to raise money to help reopen the store.

The store never reopened, of course. But we all learned a harsh lesson about the reality of life:

Sometimes the people, places, and things we cherish disappear with no warning, and there is nothing we can do about it. We also learned that sometimes we fail to appreciate the value of these things until they’re gone, because we simply assume they’ll always be there. That little candy store was one of those places.

Today the center of my universe is the corner Broadway and Columbus in San Francisco, where Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights blazed a trail before I was even born. But that dream later caught fire in my mind and became a beacon, bringing me and The Beat Museum to this very intersection where it all began.

Lately it seems so many of our beloved institutions keep closing, some as abruptly and heartbreakingly as that corner candy store from my youth. These historic establishments each played a role in giving San Francisco its distinctive character, part of what’s drawn so many people here chasing their dreams. At the Beat Museum, we believe in San Francisco. A crucial part of our mission is not only to tell the story of the Beat Generation, but to help keep its beacon aflame for the next generation.

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