And on the sixth day, it has been willed, there shall be redemption.
With the surrounding community almost miraculously having rallied this week to its appreciated aid, the unique Holy Grail Shoe Store, in downtown Los Angeles, will launch its comeback on Saturday.
A year and a half old at its handsome location, at the gentrified southwest corner of Pico Boulevard and Flower Street, Holy Grail was attacked last Sunday evening by thugs supposedly celebrating the Lakers’ basketball championship.
Horrified neighbors and activists —reportedly from around the world —have rushed in to help — pragmatically.
At 12 noon on Saturday, Holy Grail’s normal opening time, the community activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson and his Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, have organized a creative way to push back against the rioters.
The thugs raided the high-powered inventory and mangled equiupment.
The store may not regain its thousands of dollars in losses in a single day.
But the promotion, in the shadow of the Staples Center and the Convention Center, will give their pocketbook a lusty boost.
Thanks to an emergency replenishment of their latest-in-sneakers’ inventory, store owner Richard Torres, his 29-year-old son Richard Jr., who runs the business, are staging what is called a “buy-in.”
Driven by special price promotions and intended celebrity attractions, Mr. Hutchinson and the Torreses told a media conference this afternoon Holy Grail is in the neighborhood to stay.
Thinking fast and creatively when they were caught in the act of barbarically roaming otherwise deserted streets, hordes of hooligans told the LAPD they were celebrating the Lakers’ accomplishment.
The cops arrested a few of the bad boys on the spot.
But Chief Bill Bratton promised the hoodlums that police are closely studying film from the scene, when thousands of faces were daylight plain, and the LAPD has vowed to tack on dozens more arrests in the coming weeks.
In Friday’s installment, the Torreses, father and son, will talk about their rebound.
(To be continued Friday)
