Find out which stores have opened, closed or moved and what’s new in Berkeley’s nonprofit, retail and small-business communities. If you have updates to share, send an email to editors@berkeleyside.org.
Shop Talk
- Mrs. Dalloway’s celebrates 20 years of literary and garden arts
- Anchor Boxing Club brings community-focused training to a downtown basement
- A home renovation inspired a new business on College Avenue
- Redevelopment pushes La Petite Hair Salon from the Southside to the Northside
- YogaKula finds a ‘new and even better home’ on Shattuck Avenue
- AutoZone takes over former Walgreens space on San Pablo Avenue
- After 54 years, Rockridge Furniture and Design closes — at least for now
In the Spotlight Elmwood
Mrs. Dalloway’s celebrates 20 years of literary and garden arts
In 2004, two friends, Marion Abbott and Ann Leyhe, decided to open a bookstore.
Actually, the deciding was done by neighbors of the women who kept telling them that they should open a shop in the recently shuttered Avenue Books space on College Avenue. The neighbors craved another bookstore for the Elmwood neighborhood, and who better to open the store than Abbott and Leyhe who both had long careers in publishing?
“I was actually walking my dog a few times and a car would pull up and the window would go down, and I’d think, is this a drug deal or what?” said Abbott. “And then somebody would say, You know, you should be running that bookstore.”
Those same neighbors put their money where their mouths were, and along with family members of Abbott and Leyhe, put up half the money needed to open the store.
The shop, which they named Mrs. Dalloway’s, after a Virgina Woolf novel, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Leyhe had a background in gardening publications and was an avid gardener, so the women decided to carry plenty of books on the subject. And the gardening niche helped inspire the shop’s name.
“Ann and I were batting around all kinds of different names,” said Abbott. “What are we going to call this thing? It’s going to have a gardening side and it’s going to have a literature side. And literally, I woke up in the middle of the night and I went, Oh! The first line of Mrs. Dalloway is, ‘Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.’”
The shop also became known for events and author readings. They held some 100 each year pre-pandemic. Some of the authors, novelists, and poets who have graced the shop include Joyce Carol Oats, Anne Lamott, Annie Barrows, Louise Gluck, Bernie Sanders, Sonia Sotomayer, and the “Three Michaels” — Pollan, Chabon, and Lewis.
In 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, Abbott and Leyhe decided to sell the shop.
“It just seemed like it was time for younger, more energetic people to take it over,” said Abbott.
After a thorough search, they decided on Eric and Jessica Green, who took ownership in October of that year. The Greens were a good fit. Jessica worked for several years as a buyer at Cost Plus World Market and as a brand manager with MacPherson’s, while Eric worked in the book industry his entire career, including three decades at PGW (Publisher’s Group West).
“They had a perfect background,” said Abbott. “She really understood the merchandise side of things and he understood the publishing side.”
“They are talented in all the right ways,” added Leyhe.
But the new owners have kept the shop pretty much the same.
“People that have been coming to the store for years, it remains very familiar to them,” said Eric. “And that was our goal.”
The store also retained all 11 employees, most of whom still remain on staff. And the gardening section remains vibrant, which pleases Leyhe.
“I didn’t really expect it,” she said. “I think it’s just great.”
And, most importantly, neighborhood support of the shop remains.
“The neighborhood is hugely supportive of the store,” said Eric. “They were really, really, really glad to have it remain open. What often happens with small businesses is they announce it’s for sale and everyone assumes no one’s going to buy it and it’s actually going to close. And it’s really enjoyable to be in the store and have a business where the people coming in are all just so glad to be there.”
And Abbott and Leyhe are now two of the best store’s customers.
“I buy all my books there,” said Leyhe.
“I’m in there all the time,” Abbott added. “I try not to be a pest but if I see an empty book stand it’s really tempting to go fix it, but I just don’t. It’s not my job.”
Mrs. Dalloway’s Literary & Garden Arts, 2904 College Ave., Berkeley. Phone: 510-704-8222. Hours: Monday thru Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sunday, noon-5 p.m. Connect via Instagram and Facebook.
Open Downtown
Anchor Boxing Club brings community-focused training to a downtown basement
You’re never too young, and never too old, to start boxing. This is according to Eric Watkins, who opened Anchor Boxing Club last October in downtown Berkeley.
The club, in a basement with low ceilings and exposed pipes, has everything one needs to train in boxing. Which is to say, not a lot.
“It’s really bare bones,” said Watkins. “I personally love it.”
He chose the name Anchor Boxing Club for simplicity’s sake as well. Its initials spell ABC. He also likes how the anchor symbolizes strength and hope, and it’s a nod to the naval history of the area, as well.
Watkins grew up in Cleveland and started boxing at a young age. He boxed throughout high school and off and on during his twenties. After moving to the Bay Area, he began coaching at a nonprofit youth boxing organization called Fire in the Ring based in San Francisco. He loved working with kids and loved coaching, and decided to make it his full time career. He went on to work at the nonprofit Guardian Gym in Oakland and started dreaming about opening his own training center.
“One thing I would really claim to be an expert at would be boxing,” said Watkins who previously worked a string of odd jobs, including as a bouncer, a handyman, and a mover. “Between my passion for boxing and the time I’ve spent doing it, it’s something I feel proficient enough to share with people.”
Memberships at Anchor start at $199.99 per month, which includes unlimited boxing classes and open gym access, with discounts for six-month ($174.99 per month) and 12-month ($149.99 per month) memberships. Drop in classes cost $30. The club also offers an introduction to boxing class for $15.
The intro class is meant for people who are brand new to the sport. Watkins teaches students the basics: how to stand, how to position the hands, and the terminology of boxing.
“We eliminate a lot of the mysteries,” said Watkins. “I feel like that’s the hardest part. There’s a lot to learn, right?”
And Watkins insists that at his gym, there’s no danger of getting hit in the face. Only the very advanced students are allowed to spar, and even then it is highly supervised. Most students only punch bags or training mitts.
“Safety is our number one priority,” he said. “We do this because we enjoy it. We’re not trying to go home with black eyes and missing teeth and all that stuff. So it’s very controlled.”
Watkins believes that boxing training has many benefits. There’s the physical fitness aspect, of course. But Watkins believes it can make people happier.
“You’re just happy,” he said. “Just your overall demeanor. Even as long as I’ve been doing it myself, and I’ve been doing it longer than I haven’t been at this point, I still look forward to getting my own workout.”
And then there’s the community aspect.
“I feel like that’s the most positive part of it,” he said. “Seeing your friends and your community. We really are a community-focused boxing club. That’s at our core.”
Anchor Boxing Club, 2006 Kala Bagai Way B-1, Berkeley. Check website for class schedule. Connect via Instagram.
Open Elmwood
A home renovation inspired a new business on College Avenue
In the midst of the pandemic, Erin Girard and her husband Amir Azari decided to renovate their Elmwood home.
Girard, who once worked in merchandising at Gap, Inc., has an eye for design. But she had trouble finding home decor and furnishings that both looked good and were built to last.
“I was finding things that were kind of made with disposability in mind,” she said. “Made as part of a trend cycle and then when the trend is over you throw it in the landfill and buy the next thing.”
She found herself drawn to vintage and antique furnishings, as well as items made by “small makers.”
“People who were doing things in such a way that I knew I would have it for a long time,” she said.
After she finished her home renovation, she realized that she had amassed an amazing list of artisans from across the globe.
“I felt like there wasn’t a place, at least locally, that you could go to find the things that I was loving,” she said. “So, it felt like I had a sense of purpose to take all these things that I had found and bring them to the Berkeley audience.”
Girard called her new business Cousin Home, a name inspired by a tradition of passing on family heirlooms.
“I have an aunt who would clean out a closet and would cover her dining table with all the stuff she wanted to get rid of, and me and all my cousins would fight over it,” she said. “So it was based on this idea of wanting to accumulate things that you’re able to pass on to the people that you love in your life, and that they will get as much joy out of them as you did.”
After a year of selling items online, Girard opened a brick and mortar shop on College Avenue, near her home. The store officially opened on April 25.
“We have a mix of antique and vintage things along with newer things that are really thoughtfully sourced and made by people who are doing so with great care,” said Girard.
Those items include crystal glassware handmade in England ($87):
“It was started by a woman who was horrified at how rapidly crystal glasses were disappearing from the flea markets. Every time she broke one, she knew that there was just one less on the planet.”
There are also vintage dish towels ($30) sold by a mother and daughter in France, and robes made from cotton and linen handwoven on centuries-old looms in Turkey ($180). The store also carries art, paper goods, lamps, candles, mugs, bowls, baskets, and more.
One of the store’s most popular items is an “anchovy pocket knife” ($18), made by a Czech knife company that has been making the same design for 100 years.
“It’s been really fun to find all of these people who we think are manufacturing and making things in thoughtful ways and then matchmake with the people we’ve met in the neighborhood who are really trying to shop in a responsible way,” said Girard.
Cousin Home, 2946 College Ave., Berkeley. Phone: 510-296-9047. Hours: Wednesday thru Friday, noon-5 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sunday, noon-5 p.m. Connect via Instagram.
Moved Northside
Redevelopment pushes La Petite Hair Salon from the Southside to the Northside
La Petite Hair Salon, which has called 2302 Ellsworth St. home for the past 10 years, has moved because their building is being redeveloped, according to salon co-owner Lan Nguyen.
Local journalist and La Petite customer Alissa Greenberg, reached out to Berkeleyside alerting us to the move.
“Through savvy and luck they’ve found a new place on Northside to reopen,” wrote Greenberg in an email.
The salon reopened at their new address, 1816 Euclid Avenue, on July 1.
The Ellsworth Street building is being redeveloped by Riaz Capital, with plans to construct a seven-story residential building with 69 dwelling units, according to permit applications filed with the City of Berkeley. The plan will demolish two residential buildings at 2306 and 2310 Ellsworth Street, but the building at the corner of Ellsworth and Bancroft, which housed La Petite, as well as Berkeley Sports until it closed in 2020, will remain standing.
Riaz Capital had originally planned to demolish that building as well and construct a total of 127 units at the site, according to earlier permit filings with the city. This is one of three sites in Berkeley being redeveloped by Riaz, who plans to add 280 student housing units across all three projects, according to the Daily Cal.
La Petite Hair Salon, 1816 Euclid Avenue, Berkeley. Phone: 510-883-9010. Hours: Monday through Saturday, 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday, 10:30 a.m.-4 p.m.
Moved North Berkeley
YogaKula finds a ‘new and even better home’ on Shattuck Avenue
YogaKula, the yoga studio founded by Saraswati Clere in 2002, is moving. The building at 1700 Shattuck Avenue, which the studio has called home for 22 years, is being sold, according to an email sent by YogaKula to recipients of their email newsletter.
But fans of the studio won’t have to travel far to continue taking classes at YogaKula, as the new space is just a block away at 1666 Shattuck Avenue. And the move seems welcome by the studio.
The new space is “even better for our needs,” the studio posted on its website. “It has a larger light-filled yoga room, with beautiful views in all directions, a massage room, plus a spacious and serene backyard and garden.”
The studio’s class schedule and roster of teachers will remain the same.
YogaKula celebrated its new location with free opening weekend festivities on June 29-30, which featured yoga classes and meditation sessions, along with an evening performance by musicians David Estes and Prajna Vieira.
YogaKula, 1666 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. Phone: 510-486-0264. Check website for class schedule. Connect via Instagram and Facebook.
Open South Berkeley
AutoZone takes over former Walgreens space on San Pablo Avenue
AutoZone, the largest auto parts store in the U.S., has opened a new location at San Pablo and Ashby avenues in a space previously occupied by Walgreens. The new store opened on June 1.
The Berkeley location is one of more than 7,000 stores operated by the Memphis-based AutoZone.
Along with a wide array of auto parts, the store also offers free battery charging, free testing of starters and alternators, a free loan-a-tool program, and a free “Fix Finder” that can help diagnose problems when those pesky check engine lights pop up.
The company began in Arkansas in 1979 under the name Auto Shack, changing its name to AutoZone in the 1980s after it was sued for trademark infringement by the parent company of Radio Shack.
The former Walgreens store was one of several locations that the pharmacy chain closed in the Bay Area in November 2021.
AutoZone, 2995 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley. Phone: 510-898-5931. Hours: Daily, 7:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Connect via Instagram and Facebook.
Closed Claremont
After 54 years, Rockridge Furniture and Design closes — at least for now
Rockridge Furniture and Design (RF&D), which operated on Claremont Avenue for 54 years, has closed. Berkeleyside reader Lea Delson recently sent pictures of the business with large hand-lettered signs announcing the impending closure and a 70% off sale. Berkeleyside reached out to R&FD about the closure but the business owners did not respond.
In the meantime, the hand-lettered signs have been taken down, replaced with for-lease signs, and every bit of inventory has been removed from the store. The space is currently listed on Gordon Commercial Real Estate Brokerage’s website.
The shop’s Yelp page, however, lists the business as temporarily closed, with a reopening date of January 1, 2025.
Rockridge Furniture and Design, 3048 Claremont Ave., Berkeley. Connect via Instagram and Facebook.