Creativity and Community Served Up at Laurel Canyon Country Store

Halfway up Laurel Canyon Boulevard’s snaking curves from Sunset to Mulholland, the Canyon Country Store pops up on the right bank of the Kirkwood intersection.

With its central location, artsy vibe and accommodating owners, the business has become a hub for the Laurel Canyon community. Part of the credit goes to Lilly Falakshahi, who 12 years ago opened her espresso cart, Canyon Coffee, on the patio. Over time it has attracted loyal customers among canyon residents. “I just make the coffee," Falakshahi says with her wry and self-deprecating sense of humor.

But her longtime friend and Laurel Canyon resident, artist and local historian Spike Stewart says it's more than just the java. “They come for her and she happens to make a good cup of coffee. She has more artist spirit then most artists.” Stewart has lived in the canyon since 1964 and painted the iconic psychedelically colored Canyon Country Store sign that is now on the store’s T-shirts and wine labels.

“It’s a left coast vortex of bohemia,” Stewart said about the regular crowd who gathers there. “It’s a meeting place for free-thinkers, living and thinking out of the box. Millions of great ideas and collaborations happen here with some of the greatest artistic minds, talent and creative spirit you can find in one place anywhere.”

Artist and animator Evan York, a native of Queens, NY, who now lives in Laurel Canyon, has been coming to the store's patio ever since Falakshahi opened her cart in 2000. Any given morning, he is there working on one of his black and white ink drawings that might become part of one of his animated short films or onto a T-shirt worn by Billy Idol or Steven Tyler. York and Stewart have shared the patio space and covered the walls on the front of the store with mural images that show the juxtaposition of city life with that in the canyon. York is quick to admit that the gathering spot on the patio has been good for his career. “I always include influences of the city life where I grew up and the green woody environment here in the canyon. There’s no doubt that the artist interaction has been good for my career and made some good connections, but it’s more about being in a creative environment.”

Musician Aaron Gross, who takes his daily coffee break on the bench by the cart, agrees. “People shopped here, but it wasn’t a place to hang out. Once Lilly opened the cart, she brought the community to her. She arranged outings and picnics and people started to come.”

Falakshahi supports all of these friends and artists and they have become like a family. She posts local artists’ shows and musicians’ concert posters on the side of her coffee cart. For a while she even rented a house next door and turned it into a gallery for her friends.

Staying true to the original market

Tommy Bina, one of the owners of the store, along with his childhood friend and partner David Shamsa, have become caretakers of not only this market, but a keeper of Laurel Canyon history, its people and its spirit. The original store built from wood in the early 1900s burned down and what stands now was built in 1929 with brick and some of the original stones that are remnants of a river that once flowed under what is now Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

“I found this is more than just a store," Bina said. "It has a spirit. It’s true for the canyon too. So many artists get inspired from the canyon and the store has always been in the center of it all."

Bina and Shamsa bought the Canyon Country Store in 1982 from a doctor who had owned it for about 10 years. Bina is proud of the quaint atmosphere. He’s fulfilling a promise he made to the original owner, the late Bill Bergin.

“When Bill heard his store had been purchased again, he had his wife bring him here in a wheelchair at least once a week to give advice,” Bina recalled. He said Bergin pleaded, “Don’t turn this into a major supermarket chain; you should always keep this as a neighborhood country market.” Bina and Shamsa take pride in fulfilling that promise. 

To walk in the door is to go back in time. There are no sliding glass doors, no bar code scanners and barely room for two to pass in the narrow aisles. You might notice that all of the items are individually marked with price stickers and stacked tightly on the very narrow shelves. 

Bina tells a story about how in the early '80s a good-looking man would drop in wearing a sharp suit asking for Flakes, a British Cadbury candy bar. “I thought maybe he was a car salesman,” Bina said, “but when I looked him in the eyes I saw he had one brown eye and one blue eye. That’s when I realized it was David Bowie.” Bina began carrying the chocolate and over time he has filled the shelves with foods to satisfy the most eclectic and international palates: Australian vegemite, not to be confused with English marmite (also on the shelf); gumbo filé, Korean kimchi, Turkish Delight candy, Nestlé Walnut Whip, curried fruit chutney, brown sesame tamari, and kippers are among other foreign foodie faves. 

“And Mick Jagger told me that I should always have English Kit Kats on hand,” said Bina. And so he does, milk and dark chocolate.

A legacy of creative spirits

The store, like Laurel Canyon itself, is steeped in music history. The Doors lead singer Jim Morrison and his girlfriend Pamela Courson lived just behind the store and watched the people come and go. Doors producer Paul Rothchild told Bina that this inspired Morrison to include the store in his song to Pamela, Love Street. ("She lives on Love Street/ There's this store where the creatures meet.")

Then there’s “Mama” Cass Elliott of The Mamas and the Papas who lived under the store for a short time in the '60s. Bina still has the flute she played underneath the shop in what is now a wine cellar. He believes she wrote the song Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon around that time. The Mamas and the Papas California Dreamin’ musical mementos have become part of the Laurel Canyon legend along with so many other canyon inspired songs, such as Crosby, Stills and Nash’s Our House and Joni Mitchell’s Ladies of the Canyon.

There may be a few more piercings and tattoos these days, but at Falakshahi’s coffee cart outside the entrance to this Hollywood landmark, the creative vibe of musicians, moviemakers, writers and fine artists can still be found collaborating, writing, drawing and bantering on any given day of the week.

On Saturdays, the tour buses slow down in front of the store, despite honking commuter traffic, to allow tourists to perhaps catch a glimpse of someone famous sitting with his or her neighbors, discussing Hollywood film projects, local school events or the political scene.

The reality is that the celebrity factor here is really the side effect of a living breathing community of freelancing artists, filmmakers, writers and musicians who work from home and come down to take their social bonding on the patio of the store. Musician and filmmaker Billy Jayne is a regular. “Everyone is so fast-paced that leisure is a commodity. People show up needing to connect to other artists. Like the old original coffee houses used to be. Lilly gives a sense of belonging, bonding and community. She became the excuse to let it happen all the time.”

Much of the staff of the store are Laurel Canyon residents and are used to seeing celebrities stop by. They are given their space with the exception of including them in the local banter and idea exchanges. They also have to wait in line for coffee like everyone else.

“People who come just to hang out to be with those people don’t last long here. The history of the canyon has always been a palace next to a lean-to.  … The whole idea behind bohemia ... live and let live …,” Stewart points out. “And leave me alone,” chorus Stewart and Jayne in unison.

Making neighborly and family traditions

Stewart, an avid animal lover, always has treats ready for the canine friends who come down with their people for coffee. In fact, 24 years ago he and Bina decided to raise money for pet adoptions by printing and selling T-shirts with the store’s logo. They organized neighbors in their Canyon Country Store T-shirts to gather for a group picture in front of the store, then sold copies of the photo to residents, raising more than $40,000 for charity.

Throughout the years, the popularity of this event boomed and became larger than the original intent. The annual Laurel Canyon photograph, usually during the last week of October, has become something of a block party. A rock band composed the store's staffers jams on the patio and the line for Falakshahi’s coffee loops several times around. At the scheduled time, police stop traffic for 10 minutes in front of the store so that residents including families, friends, dogs, cats, birds and once even a tortoise, pile on to the street, sitting shoulder to shoulder, hanging off the posts and street signs to drape over their neighbors for the annual memento and record of their life in the canyon. One resident’s mother who happened to visit from out of town on Picture Day 2010 commented, “I haven’t seen a gathering like this since Greenwich Village, 1969.”

When the hoopla of the photograph is over, the neighbors are there on the patio, surrounded by coffee cups, artist materials, pages from scripts, cigarettes, pets and children. The latest photo is enlarged and hangs over the entrance to the store, a year-round reminder to the residents that this is their neighborhood and that they belong here. Always humble, Falakshahi says, “I wouldn’t be able to do this for this long, that is, make coffee here, if I didn’t feel like this wasn’t my family.”

When one regular customer was nine months pregnant and her husband had to travel for a television shoot, Falakshahi made sure the expectant mother had her number on speed dial in case labor came early. Kids who come home from college come down to the coffee cart to check in with Falakshahi, Stewart and the gang. Stewart says two babies in the canyon have been named after Falakshahi. And so another generation of creative spirits comes to the canyon.