ford's magazine lists 15 ways we can support local businesses during the coronavirus shutdown why is it important local businesses are essential for our economy they bring growth and innovation to our communities tonight our show was to support a local business while giving you new ways to change up your recipes it's good to have you here from los angeles this is klcs pbs welcome to everybody with angela williamson an innovation arts education and public affairs program everybody with angela williamson is made possible by viewers like you thank you and now your host dr angela williamson kim peoples is here with us tonight kim it's so great to talk to you oh thank you for having me this is such an honor well we're filming this a little bit earlier than our nightly show because we want to show your beautiful store but before we go into all the items that are in this store tell us a little bit about you oh my gosh about me um well i've been doing this particular business for the last seven years prior to that i was a financial analyst and i worked for a large uh retail electronic retailer for about 23 years before that i was in business with my father who probably taught me almost everything that i know that's important to business right and the journey started right out of college with dad yeah okay so we're going to talk about the journey and how it started with dad in a few minutes but first i love the story that you tell of why you chose this folk location bomb foss and claremont so tell us that story yeah so being a financial person right i i knew in my heart that claremont was the place to be but being that financial person i had to do the math and the homework behind it right so you can't see it here but right across the street from us is a little stairwell and so i sat on those stairs for two weeks and actually counted people to make sure that this was the right location right so i was looking for you know folks that were walking by but i was looking to see if they were shopping did they have bags in their hands and at the same time i was comparing another location that i was looking at so we were doing exactly the same day parts the same everything now that's really great advice for someone who might be thinking about i mean i know we're in a shutdown right now but people are still entrepreneurs so they're thinking about what they want to do next and start their own small business why do you think that that was important for you to do that well i think you know and it's kind of a cliche in the business world but they say location location location right and honestly once i picked the location and i knew i had the perfect spot the rest just kind of happened you know organically right and that was the biggest decision so you do need to pick the right location that's going to work for your type of business because not every business needs to be in the same location right we knew we needed walk by traffic it was nice here in claremont because we have other small businesses that are around us so people are used to supporting we had a movie theater we had restaurants so people were going to eat after coming you know by and visiting us after they eat and after they go to the movies so i think location is super important and you got to also make sure that you're picking the right square footage for your store that you're not picking you know a store that's too big and you're not going to be able to cover the rent for example or put you know the bigger the store the more merchandise you have to buy and put in there so you want it's kind of like the goldilocks you're looking for that perfect little store wow wow and we're so happy you're here too in claremont well you know one of the questions i'm thinking in the back of my mind and viewers might want to know this too why a european market i mean because you have to come and then train us as americans of how we can enjoy this european market so tell us what you do what you did there sure so um kind of why the european market i mean once i got past the taste and the quality it almost didn't matter you know if it was a european market or anything i was sold right i just loved it so much but the thing that i did love is it's not a store you're gonna find on every other corner right i wanted something that was unique something that i could bring to people something that had a story almost every product in here has a story and you can trace these products back not only to the producers but to the very trees for example that our olives come from so to me that was important integrity quality and vomfas brought that i love it well you mentioned earlier some of the reasons why you chose this location because it was surrounded by movie theaters and we don't have the movie theaters right now so it was surrounded by other small businesses and a lot of small businesses like your business you've been actually learning to cope with covet so i'd like you to talk a little bit about that and some changes that you had to make with von foss to make sure that vonfoss is still here yes and and thank you for that and right off the bat i also want to thank you too because early on we didn't know i i we didn't know how this was going to end up and we still don't know how it's going to end up but the very early days were super scary in here and i remember one day you heard me say that we weren't doing so well and you rallied the troops and you brought your friends and your family and folks in here and people were buying gift cards and supporting us and doing things so thank you from me from the bottom of my heart because the first few days or weeks of this covid was so scary we just didn't know the the thing that has stayed scary is there are so many small businesses around us that aren't making it and we're we're just sad about that the movie theater still hasn't been able to open back up and the question is will they you know when they get the opportunity can they you know so we've seen so many tragedies from this in here locally and even even in our von fosse's you know in some of the locations but some of the things that we had to do was to first of all make sure that we were being safe right we do everything following the health department and cdc guidelines right so that that was number one we wanted to make sure that you as a customer coming in are safe but our employees are safe and then beyond that we had to stop tasting but even though that's what we do our motto is try before you buy right now um we're not allowed to do that and guess what while that saddens us we're happy to do that if that keeps everybody safe and so if i was a small business owner and i'm facing some of these same trials and that you've gone through what would you tell me sure and while i'm no expert i don't think any of us are during this time we're all kind of learning as we go the one thing that i can say that helped us the most was the ability to be flexible and to pivot when you need to pivot right and be able to even talk to your customers and find out how best you can serve them if you've got a way to survey them or talk to them just directly because some of the things that for us right away was when especially again early on when people were sheltering in place they still needed their vampires products so i got in my car and started delivering you know so people would call up and now we've got a website so you can go on the website and do it from there but people would call up and we would just get in the car and drive it to them so i think for other people out there that are running their small businesses during this time is obviously got to do everything with the utmost safety and with both your customers and your employees in mind but the other thing is is that you've got to be able to be flexible and think about business in a way you've never thought about it before and you might find that some of the new ways of doing business are even better pre-covered we were so ingrained into this community and the community wanted to make sure that they supported us so um one of the things that i can say is claremont is one of those communities that does have a lot of support like from the rotary club and the quantas and different places and i say reach out to them because they've all got programs going on they're trying to help local businesses get with your community and see what you can do to support maybe the seniors in your area that can't get out and about we've got a good relationship with pilgrim place here which is a place for the senior clergy and so they know if they need something they can call me and i'll bring it to them wow i love that because people are just they're looking for ways and you did you said i'm not an expert but people want people's personal experiences and so that you're sharing your personal experience is so great right now well let's pivot a little bit for ourselves but i want to talk about some of these wonderful products that we have here because one way that you've probably notice that people are doing a lot more as they're cooking at home more and they could fit von foss into their new recipes correct absolutely one of the things that that we have seen is that there's a resurgence of people cooking at home right learning to cook in some cases and some of the things that i will hear sometimes is people say olive oils and vinegars i don't know what to do with them and so maybe i'm scared to jump into that arena and what i say is almost every great recipe starts with olive oil you can't pick up a recipe that doesn't almost start with olive oil right and then the question becomes what olive oil and how do we get you know really good olive oil right and so we try to answer that question here at vamphos we serve the top quality olive oil it's always extra virgin you never have to worry about you know middle men and people cutting other things into it it is the purest quality so then the question becomes how do i use it right and so a lot of people might think bread dipping and vinaigrettes for their salads and there's nothing wrong with that right that is probably the number one and two uses for my olive oils and vinegars but also steak marinades and you know cooking with your rice and adding you know a little olive oil or vinegar to it makes it really nice our vinegars are what we call drinking vinegars so you can actually make little spritzers or shrubs are you familiar with the shrub no explain that yeah so a shrub is a vinegar drink that they would actually drink during the colonial times it was kind of the pre-cocktail days and you just mix a little vinegar in with some sparkling water and voila you've got a little spritzer and so a lot of people will use our vinegars for that as well wow especially the passion fruit or our calamansi vinegar that's my favorite vinegar so now i have another use for that vinegar as well yeah wow okay so we don't just have the vinegars and the oils but you have other things as well we do talk about them sure absolutely we've got some gift sets as you can see as we're coming up on to the holiday seasons we've got those we've got this is probably the most unique item in the whole store and my best selling spice it's called unicorn magic sea salt and i have no idea what you use that for so you have to tell us right right so i always say well who doesn't need a little unicorn magic in their life right but this is a mixture of a sweet and salty so it's really good on popcorn or even as a topper on ice cream just love it and with the beautiful spices in there and uh it's so good and people are just drawn to this unicorn magic wow i love it and it has all these great colors to it as well too wow okay so now i know what it does so i have to pick that up well tell me about these these three items here this is the same item but yeah so just a couple of things just to say that you know while we do the oils and vinegars we also have teas in the store we have some pantry items particularly here the peanuts we have a maple bacon peanut which people go crazy for dill pickle which we hope to have back in stock soon we have sold out of that a salt and pepper and then a cajun spice and so the peanuts people have gone crazy and you're looking for things just to snack on and while you're home and maybe doing your home office work or whatever these peanuts are perfect or on a zoom call and you just hold the peanuts and these make perfect gifts as well they do they absolutely do you do a little three pack of those or we make baskets around the peanuts as well wow now one i just want to get one tip from you before we close tonight but a tip of how we could change you talked about a marinade but maybe tell us about one thing where you've changed an oil and a vinegar to a standard recipe and it's just the best thing ever yeah so i actually have two things and i'll do them real quick that works for me okay so we were talking earlier about a vinegar called calamansi that's a fruit from the philippines and so it's a cross between a lime and a tangerine and i can no longer have salmon without a spritz of that on top super easy make your salmon and just spritz it with that and now you've got a whole new dish it's just so delicious the other thing that i really enjoyed and just mixed up a really simple or switched up a really simple recipe was um i love caprisi salads but sometimes you know you don't have all this stuff or you want to do it really quick and so you just do the little mozzarella balls you can even do the tomato balls but i add in a fresh asparagus in with that and then use our basil and a cherry balsamic and mix that up with a little bruschetta sauce or spices and it's delicious and you can just do that in a bowl you don't have to do it all fancy or yeah very nice well this is just wonderful thank you so much for opening your store up to us oh honored to have you here thank you it is our pleasure and also too thank you for the advice that you're giving just sharing your story to small business owners and entrepreneurs out there that are watching right now because it's so important they're so much a part of our economy so thank you so much so and to everyone just please shop local shop small this year it's just going to mean the difference to a small business owner definitely and i love that it's a perfect way to end tonight [Music] where's tommy i thought he was with you no jack [Music] don't stop keep playing here we go here's the fun part encouragement pass it on from the foundation for a better life manny thank you so much for being here well thank you for having me this is wonderful chance to talk about forgotten hollywood i can't wait yes and before we get to forgotten hollywood we want to know about you so tell us a little bit about yourself well i'm a southern california native and i currently am a professor of cinema television and radio at two colleges in southern california fullerton college in mount san antonio college i'm a broadcaster started my career which i'll talk about in a bit but currently i work at as a weekend traffic anchor at knx 1070. and i'm a author of a forgotten hollywood a book series that intersects hollywood with americana and what i metaphorically call hollywood and vine moments i love it i love it so tell us how does a reporter get to being a specialist about everything hollywood well it didn't start that way but i've been fortunate to work with legendary people who work in southern california broadcasting which is in the shadow of hollywood i was hired by the iconic art lebeau i think everybody knows who art is i think i could do a lot worse than having as a mentor art lebeau who's still on the radio at 95 years of age he's in the radio broadcasting hall of fame and he currently works at kday so he yeah he's uh he's a my mentor my guide and he was the one that suggested that i step out of his shadow and ironically he stands about five foot six i'm six foot five so standing out of his formidable shadow you get the picture yes i do so i i i decided that i wanted to talk about something that i thought would really resonate with the public that's used to listening to oldies that i used to play and i felt that hollywood was something that really resonated with my audience now my parents were really big on promoting education as i grew up but it was my grandmother who believed that i should understand the arts and humanities learning about music and television and cinema but i wanted to come up with the perfect angle and what i decided to do is to write about how hollywood tackles americana and some of the big things that we take for granted but look at it in another way and instead of using familiar names like marilyn monroe or humphrey bogart or kerry grant or catherine hepburn i decided to use the actors who appear under the titles of the films people who are still familiar if you see their face but are rapidly becoming forgotten hence the name forgotten hollywood folks like peter laurie or claude raines or basil rathbone marjorie maine key luke eddie rochester anderson these are great actors who appeared in as many movies as the a-listers but they tell remarkable stories in the way we shape this uh the old west uh the way we look at war the great war and how world war ii may have ended because of hollywood uh it looks at the great depression the dust bowl and even the assassination of president kennedy we look at how hollywood tackles race and disability well you threw out so many names there so and this is the reason why we have you on the show because we wouldn't have you here if you couldn't tell us a fascinating story so i want to hear a story that maybe we don't know about but we've seen this and we or will hear this phrase and it's that character so i want a story i've got a great name arthur lake means nothing to you i'm sure no but arthur lake was this um serviceable actor he didn't appear in many movies he didn't have to but it one thing he is known for is playing the lovable dagwood bumpstead who was part of the blondie series of comic strips and then later movies and it's by no coincidence that he got the role because the comic strip was owned by the hearst company well arthur lake was married to the love child of marion davies and william randolph first he was set for life never had to work yet he became dagwood bumstead once he got that role he never did any other role except that part in a number of movies and television he had so much free time that he donated his time to the hollywood canteen to raise uh love and and comfort and money for the armed services the war bond effort and he met somebody at one of the hollywood canteen socials and that individual was murdered two years later and i think we might have known it's the oldest cold case file on record it's the black dahlia so he actually met the the elizabeth short who was the black dahlia and he became a suspect in that case so now he's married to one of the most important fam into one of the most important families he's involved with the largest cold case file now i call this chapter from the sublime to the ridiculous here's the ridiculous as dagwood bumstead the character was known for a couple of things one he'd be late for work knock the postman into the bushes letters would go flying but he was also known for having a great hunger for sandwiches and particularly a sandwich that rose about this high with a pickle on top lots of different meats with lots of breads in between it was known and came to be known as the dagwood the dagwood sandwich was the most popular sandwich of the 1940s in the 1950s and when he would appear at rotary clubs he would always bring a dagwood sandwich for the rotarians to have for lunch they became so popular that when rotary clubs would have their meetings without him they'd still order these dagwoods but they changed the name to the rotary club sandwich the club sandwich is based on the dagwood created by the character that was performed by arthur lake hollywood history and a ridiculous form of american history wow okay so how do you start from the research of who this person is to all of a sudden now we're really remembering him because every time we order a club sandwich there's a pass to it so how do you get from that point to this point where we talk about it today there's different ways i mean i can either come up with the actor and then try and try and find the angle but more often i will look for the subject matter and then try to find the actor that actually is part of that subject matter so we're going to be working on a documentary because what what forgotten hollywood has become is a franchise uh not only is it a book series which we've got two more books coming out by the way and i'll tell you that in a second but we also have a a cable podcast on therapy cable and we also have a book series and we have a blog site and we also have a a podca a weekly radio show so we have a radio program that runs but we're going to also do a documentary on one of the subjects and that subject is lionel barrymore because he was the perfect candidate to talk about how we perceive disability and so i think that this is a fascinating topic and i think it deserves a documentary look and here's here's the the way it works lionel barrymore had a terrific family i mean we're talking hollywood royalty well he was such a great actor that he made great films and he won an academy award early on when they were just giving out awards he won the third best actor oscar ever for his work and he made great films like grand hotel dinner at eight rasputin and the empress but after he made captains courageous he broke his hip the doctor examined him said the hip would heal but he also kept falling down and they did some research and found out he had advanced degenerative arthritis within a year he would be in a wheelchair now he also had a lifetime contract at mgm so when he went back to see louis b mayer he decided that he was going to make him honor that lifetime contract even while working in a wheelchair of course mgm did and he made a litany of great films while working his craft from a wheelchair he did a test pilot a guy named joe he was in key largo with bogart and mccall he was the bad guy mr potter that we all know from it's a wonderful life and he was an active doctor in the dr kildare series he was dr gillespie performing his work in his craft from a wheelchair so impressed with his audience they kept coming the bills were paid but there was one member of the audience who could not see could not hear but went to the movies was told the movies by braille that person was helen keller helen keller was so impressed with the work of lionel barrymore she wrote a letter to her best friend eleanor roosevelt said our time has come to fight disease and disability let's do it now talk to your husband she spoke to franklin who himself suffered a disability well franklin thought well let's raise money for my campaign let me partner with hollywood every year on my birthday which he did and the march of dimes became the most successful fight in uh for a charity in the history of those fights so good and so important that now when you see a dime you see franklin d roosevelt on that dime that's how important the march of dimes were the look the way we look at disability is because of three individuals that barely knew each other one a president who partnered with hollywood two an individual who could not see could not hear and still went to the movies and three an actor my actor in my books lionel barrymore who had a lifetime contract at mgm and was committed committed to making sure he worked even while in a wheelchair and so you're also a professor so how do we incorporate what you've written into what's learned to future cinema students well i think what i try to teach my students which i think is really important is that they can do whatever they are interested in doing they don't have to be committed to the brand of an individual who wants to hire them anymore in today's atmosphere today's platforms you can actually develop your own brand and that shows maturity and it shows growth and more people are more willing to then network with you maybe even hire you if you've developed your own brand now in my day you know the day when we used to drive our cars using our feet like the flintstones in my day we would have to work off everybody else's brand but today the kids are really lucky they can develop their brand very young they have platforms to put them on including youtube and tick tock and all these other wonderful platforms and this is what i teach them and then i'll i'll take them to linkedin for example and we'll set up a a nice you know resume and then what we do is we we check the search engines based on the keywords on their resumes and we help them find jobs i like to tell stories that are seldom told because i think it's those forgotten hollywood stories that are going to entice my listener base my viewer base my readership and i think that's my small part in keeping this alive and i love your small part thank you so much manny for keeping these legacies alive and then actually moving them for paying them forward to telling your students about these people that have made hollywood what we know of it today so thank you so much and thank you for joining us on everybody with angela williamson viewers like you make this show possible stay in touch with us on social media good night and stay well [Music] you