Larry's Levis & Collectibles Brings Vintage Flavor to Lankershim

In 1972, Larry Pearson made the roughly-50-mile-trek from the San Fernando Valley to Pomona, where he sold sewing machines at the L.A. County Fair. The then-29-year-old was working for Jake Kahn, who owned at the corner of Lankershim and Chandler boulevards. They’d met several years earlier when Pearson leased sewing machines from Kahn for his clothing manufacturing business.   

“Sometimes things come full circle,” mused Pearson as he stood in his new store, on a quiet Saturday afternoon. The friendly 68-year-old’s shop now stands in Kahn’s former store, which had been relocated further south on Lankershim Boulevard just one block down from Magnolia Boulevard.  Pearson never thought he’d be occupying his old boss’ space, he said. “It just kind of worked out that way,” he said.

When Kahn passed away in 2005 the 2,500-square-foot store was packed wall-to-wall with about 850 sewing machines, and the doors to his business were simply shuttered with all the remaining stock locked inside of it, said Pearson. He began leasing the space in 2009, and eventually he sold most of the machines through Craigslist and eBay to fund the location’s renovation.

Now, a formerly cramped, stuffy and allergy-inducing sewing machine store has been transformed to a bright and airy NYC loft-style vintage and antiques shop. The old white plaster was stripped off the walls to reveal floor-to-ceiling bricks, the decades-old floor tiles were removed and the ceiling now shows off the exposed wooden beams.

On one side of the store, there’s an extensive inventory of vintage mens and womens Levis denim pants and jackets from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s; Hawaiian-print shirts, over five dozen pairs of cowboy boots and gym shorts in any print imaginable. On the other side, customers can marvel at WW II-era Coca Cola machines, ’50s costume jewelry, vintage oak dressers and tea carts, mid-century modern coffee tables and more.

As customers wander in, K-EARTH 101 FM plays in the speakers as Pearson gives them all a quick run-down of the spot’s history.

“I’ve only been open seven weeks,” he tells everyone, and recounts how the entire space was once filled with sewing machines (now, they take up just a little more than one wall of space).

Half of his customers are locals, he said, while the other half are passers-by who stop in after seeing the “eye candy” on the sidewalk in front of the store.

Case in point: Mary and Luke (both preferred to provide just their first names), from the Valley and West Hollywood, respectively, stopped in after spotting Pearson’s fire-engine-red Coca Cola machine as they were browsing at on the opposite side of Lankershim.

“We just saw it from across the street,” said Mary, so they decided to check out the store. As they browsed, the giant 46-by-60-inch vintage French liquor advertisement on the wall caught her friend’s eye, and the two told Pearson they’d return and see if the poster would fit Luke’s new condo.

Another time, a young couple on vacation from Florida came in after seeing a big Arabian statue out in front (“I thought maybe it was Sabu or Sinbad because of the ‘S’ on his forehead,” said Pearson). A few days later, they pulled up in a taxi and bought the statue, he said. Because of its size and weight, it cost the couple $500 to ship it back home. “They could’ve bought another seat on the airplane and just strapped him in!” Pearson joked.

Customers can expect the gregarious white-haired store owner to share stories about items at his store. 

“I bought that at an estate sale in the garage,” Pearson told Mary and Luke as they mulled over the large vintage poster. Its black wooden frame was a lucky find that had been left on a sidewalk, and it just happened to be the perfect fit.

Prior to his current business, Pearson owned a clothing store off Hollywood Boulevard from 1975 to 1990, then opened another in Van Nuys from 1991 to 2008. He’d always sold Levis denim, gym wear and work clothes, but his love for collectibles made him want to expand to selling vintage and antiques. “I decided I should find a place where I could sell [everything at once],” he said.

The North Hollywood resident said his heart breaks a little every time his vintage items sell because of the nostalgic connections –- After all, he bought them for his store because there was something about each item that initially caught his eye and interest. But in the end, he just hopes his “business is successful and I can spend another 15 years here.”