Family Owned Business

John Papadakis' restaurant is a lot like its owner -- big, brash and loud. No dim lights, no quiet romantic evening here. On a typical night, the music builds and Papadakis breaks into a Greek dance with a waitress, a pair of belly dancers wriggle through the aisles as the owner tosses dollar bills at them, an 88-year-old tuxedo-clad violinist who played with Frank Sinatra strolls through the restaurant. Plates break, a dish of saganaki is set on fire. A tap dancer in a baggy suit stomps in front of a self-portrait of Anthony Quinn as Zorba the Greek.

John Papadakis' restaurant is a lot like its owner -- big, brash and loud. No dim lights, no quiet romantic evening here. On a typical night, the music builds and Papadakis breaks into a Greek dance with a waitress, a pair of belly dancers wriggle through the aisles as the owner tosses dollar bills at them, an 88-year-old tuxedo-clad violinist who played with Frank Sinatra strolls through the restaurant. Plates break, a dish of saganaki is set on fire. A tap dancer in a baggy suit stomps in front of a self-portrait of Anthony Quinn as Zorba the Greek.

When small-business consultant Nitin Bhatt began working on a make-over of Avalon Liquor & Gifts on Catalina Island, he asked owner Patrick Johnson to fax him a list of documents. There was only one problem: Johnson did not have a fax machine. "Here's my first recommendation," Bhatt said. "Since the store was founded by his parents 45 years ago and Pat's worked there since he was 13, they have not changed the way they do things.

For the Camello family of San Pedro, the repossessed 40-foot sailboat with its mahogany decks and twin carbon fiber masts has come to symbolize all that has gone wrong with their business and the pleasure-craft industry. The sailboat sits quietly at the family business, Colonial Yacht Anchorage in Wilmington. Until the recession hit, the company focused on managing its own vessel repair business and 120-slip marina. Now it's selling repossessed vessels such as this schooner.

It is midnight at the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market and the chilly air clangs with the cacophony of truck pistons. Men are everywhere on the white-lit loading docks, bending over to sniff crates of bok choy, injecting probes into mangos and melons, careening out of semitrailers and massive freezers in carts and forklifts, haggling amid moist boxes in Spanish, Armenian, Korean and Mandarin Chinese.

Ben Goldhirsh is zipped into his wetsuit, at the wheel of a cluttered old Ford. He pulls into the parking lot at Topanga Beach, kills the ignition and checks the surf. "Do you know Biggie's 10 Crack Commandments?" he asks. (That's the Notorious B.I.G.) "Interestingly enough, a lot of the life lessons my dad tried to pass on to me bear a striking similarity to Biggie's 10 Crack Commandments." He laughs, a little uncomfortably. "Rule No. 1 is never let anyone know how much money you have."

Long after I had forsaken fast food, I occasionally found myself sneaking past the farmers' markets, gourmet delis and organic gardens of my Berkeley home to a guilty pleasure--10 minutes up the freeway.

Up Interstate 15 just past the High Desert city of Victorville, Ernesto Enriquez found his dream. It's here, where old Route 66 takes visitors west, winding through yesteryear's dusty town centers, that you can see the cottonwoods lining the Roy Rogers Double R Bar Ranch.

Americans celebrate this Fourth of July weekend with concerns about increasing commitments in dangerous places around the world. In developing nations from the Middle East to Africa, America is trying to spread a message of economic freedom -- independent business development, greater involvement of women -- with missionary zeal. Is that wise policy? Sure it is.

As though strolling the boulevards of Versailles, Joseph Plauzoles would take his early morning promenade around Rancho Park in West Los Angeles. As the 89-year-old Frenchman turned the corner onto Westwood Boulevard, he delighted in the approaching view: his bookstore. Plauzoles passed away several years ago, said his son Lucien, thankful that his father isn't here to see La Cite, the city's only French bookstore, about to go out of business after 52 years.

If it weren't for family politics, would the Pritzkers be taking Hyatt Hotels Corp. public? Preliminary offering documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission suggest there is little other reason to sell shares in the Chicago family's crown jewel during the worst economy since the Great Depression. The documents pull back the curtain for the first time on a global hotel behemoth with a sterling balance sheet and no apparent business need to raise cash right now. From 2004 through 2008, Hyatt revenue grew from $2.7 billion to $3.8 billion.

Secundino "John" Cabrera has heard it all. A heavyset man with a shaved head and large glasses, not given to chatter, Cabrera has been the one person in town that folks could talk to when no one else would listen. Tough finances, lost jobs, births, deaths, the weather, abusive husbands, football, soccer, kids in jail -- you name it, he's heard it. At 64, Cabrera's life has been the small market that bears his family name in the middle of a block of single-family houses in Hawaiian Gardens.

It's 4:30 in the morning and Jacob Paz has been awake for half an hour, trying to squeeze in a little homework. But the phone rings. A load of 250 Christmas trees is on the way. So much for the 17-year-old high school senior's plan to start his English essay on how two world wars fueled disillusionment in American literature. It's time to get to work. Since Oct.

Petty Enterprises, the venerable NASCAR team led by Richard Petty, sold control of the family business Wednesday to investment firm Boston Ventures. Once one of stock car racing's most powerful teams with "The King" himself at the wheel, Petty Enterprises fell into mediocrity during the last two decades and hasn't won a race since 1999. "The time has come for Petty Enterprises to take the steps necessary to get back to victory lane," Petty, 70, said in a statement.

When Liu Lan entertains clients at her Shanghai cosmetics shop, she pulls out a jug of Gallo's Carlo Rossi red wine. "The taste is fresh and it's easy to get used to," said Liu, 32, who thinks the big bottle "looks special, different from other wines." The cosmetics shop in crowded Shanghai represents just how much has changed since Ernest and Julio Gallo founded E.& J. Gallo Winery in an industrial section of rural Modesto after Prohibition ended in 1933. With annual sales of $3.

Ever the proud father, Chris MacAskill screens 20-year-old home movies of his sons -- Ben singing about a stegosaurus, Mark getting a mohawk -- on his laptop. "This is the negative of working with family members," a red-faced Mark, now 26, says before retreating to his cubicle. Meet the MacAskills, Silicon Valley's version of the Waltons: seven members of a close-knit clan, ranging in age from 23 to 63, who run SmugMug Inc., which helps families share their own Kodak moments online.

Yuji Kawana watched as a conveyor belt carried row after row of bright pink-and-white fish cakes shaped like smooth, split logs into a massive steamer. Like his grandfather and father, Kawana makes kamaboko. For more than six decades, his family has satisfied what was once a craving unique to Japanese immigrants for the rubbery cakes made from a fish paste called surimi.

Adray's appliance and electronics store, an institution in Orange County for 30 years, has unexpectedly closed its doors in the middle of the holiday shopping season. It was not immediately clear why the store, which sold goods ranging from cameras and refrigerators to lawn mowers and cigars, was shutting down. A telephone recording at the store says Adray's is no longer in business.

When Casey Loyd was looking to expand his spa-manufacturing business three years ago, several other states aggressively courted him to leave Southern California. The offers were tempting, but the Southland's ample supply of skilled labor and his own fondness for the area led Loyd to keep Cal Spas in Pomona. "If I was a bean counter and I was in a publicly traded company, I probably would have gone," said Loyd, the company's president.

At the trendy Suki 7 restaurant-bar in Westlake Village, tipplers might feel as if they've been launched into deep space, passing spinning galaxies. Or that they've plunged into the ocean amid amoeba-like creatures. It's not the martinis. It's the decor. The back wall is a dramatic expanse of black glass embedded with hundreds of oval swirls -- translucent slices of natural agate, backlit and glowing.