Shops

For most retail stores, staying in business for only a few days would be considered a major flop. But a growing number of merchants are opening shops and abruptly shutting them down soon after -- on purpose. These quickie retail operations -- known as pop-ups -- are showing up throughout Southern California and around the nation, filling in the gaps at recession-battered shopping centers for a fraction of the regular rents. Once limited to seasonal shops and dusty liquidation centers, pop-up stores are now being opened by some of the nation's biggest retailers.

Toys R Us Inc. is bringing cheap toys front and center. Starting today, the toy giant is introducing $1-$2-$3 Fun! shops in the front of its stores to help parents provide affordable fun for their children. Since the holiday season, several toy makers and retailers have boosted their selection of inexpensive toys in response to weak consumer spending amid the recession. Each $1-$2-$3 Fun! shop features about 100 items for $3 or less with themes such as dinosaurs, games, princess dress-up accessories, musical instruments and art supplies.

It's hard to imagine that pockets of small-town America exist in the spread and sprawl of Southern California. But they do here and there. Montrose, a tiny community in Glendale snuggled in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, offers that small-town spirit and ambience. It's a step back in time with its 1950s bowling alley, the 50-year-old independent Faye's Department Store, tree-lined streets, quaint shops, service-oriented merchants and a weekly farmers market.

At a time when tourists visited the Grand Canyon in stagecoaches, they did their souvenir shopping at a tent set up by a man named John George Verkamp. It was 1898, before the Grand Canyon was a national park, before there was a National Park Service and before Arizona was even a state. Not many had the means to visit the mile-deep gorge, so it was mostly just a handful of adventurers, prospectors, the American Indians whose people had lived there for centuries, and the Verkamps. These days, the Grand Canyon has luxury lodges and cute coffee shops.

Los Angeles Police Department detectives are asking for the public's help in identifying an armed man who has robbed more than a dozen sandwich and retail shops in South Los Angeles. The man, whom authorities have dubbed the "Left-Handed Eyeglass Bandit," typically walks in the front door of a business, draws a small-caliber revolver with his left hand and demands money from the clerk. Police described the robber as an African American man in his 30s, who is 5 feet 10 and weighs between 160 and 190 pounds.

Growing up next door to Chuy Carburetors in Cypress Park meant Christian Martin got his bicycle tires filled up by brotherly mechanics and, when he got older, his car battery jumped for free. Over the years, additional mom-and-pop auto shops cropped up in his neighborhood, just north of where the 110 and 5 freeways intersect, and Martin, 30, says he'd welcome more. "It's convenient, and they're local so they won't try to rob you," he said. "They're just part of the neighborhood."

Ted Thompson, a civil engineer from Santa Clarita, likes his coffee without Internet. But sitting in a downtown Los Angeles Starbucks, he worried that there might not be much room for him in the chain's shops in the future. "You won't be able to find a place to sit down anymore if more people are coming in to use their computers," said Thompson, 70. "I thought a coffee shop was for drinking coffee." On Thursday, Starbucks Corp. instituted a free, unlimited Wi-Fi Internet policy for patrons at its nearly 6,800 company-operated stores in the U.S., plus 750 locations in Canada.

Location: 928 S. Western Ave., Los Angeles. From the 10 Freeway, take the Western Avenue exit and head north. Hours: 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon.-Sat.; 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sun. What you'll find: A quick drive by Koreatown Plaza won't yield a lot of information. It sits like a monolith on Western Boulevard, between 9th and San Marino streets, offering few clues to what's inside. Three floors of shops face inward, with second- and third-floor walkways overlooking a low-key courtyard area on the first floor.

Come sundown the first Saturday of every month, tree-lined 2nd Street in Santa Ana is jampacked with crowds - sipping cappuccinos at the Gypsy Den cafe, downing cocktails at Lola Gaspar or pigging out at Memphis at the Santora's crawfish boil while listening to live music on the promenade. Others are busy gallery hopping. This is, after all, Santa Ana's Artists Village. Santa Ana has long taken a back seat to Newport Beach and artsy Laguna as a weekend destination, but first-time visitors to the Artists Village downtown will be surprised by the wealth of independent restaurants and bars, shops and galleries - not to mention the historic buildings along the way. According to local historian Tim Rush, who gives tours the first Saturday of every month for the Santa Ana Historical Preservation Society, more than 6,000 historic buildings lie throughout Santa Ana in architectural styles that include Victorian, Craftsman, Beaux Arts, Moderne, Mission Revival and Spanish Rococo.

From outside the store in the Northridge mall, there was no sign on Thursday night that the Borders chain is shutting down. Window displays still offered "Borders Rewards. " And through the glass doors I saw a giant placard touting the chain's "new Kobo eReader, Touch Edition. " It's just like reading a real book, it promised. Inside, real books were everywhere. But the cafe at the back of the store was dark, walled off by a phalanx of magazine racks; empty save for a pair of employees yanking menu boards from the wall and filling trash barrels.