Ciao, Cirone’s
Beloved Beach mainstay closing after 50 years,
The sign in the window of Cirone’s Fine Foods, the half-century-old grocery store, repository of Beaches hospitality and dauntless seller of unsellable knickknacks, says “Happy Retirement . . . Celebrate with Joe.”
There will be a “blowout sale” on April 25 and 26, the orange bristol board reads. “Everything Must Go!!!”
That includes Joe Cirone, the shop’s proprietor and namesake.
Cirone recently announced, via the sign in the window, that he is retiring. Except no one seems happy about it, and no one seems in the mood for celebrating. Least of all Cirone. “If I retire, what do I do?” he said, standing in the threshold of his store with the possessiveness of a gargoyle. “Here’s the thing: I never played golf. I was busy with the store.”
Cirone says he bought the Queen St. E. grocery when he was 22. He turned 75 last year. Having poured his life into the place, he’s not entirely sure what to do with himself.
“I don’t have free time, really. My customers are my free time.”
His powerful memory for names and biographies — and his craggy smile and cheerfully squinted eyes — have endeared him to generations of customers.
“He knows what I do, he knows my face,” said Ron Nurse, cracking a can of Pepsi purchased, as a gift to the departing shopkeeper, for twice its value. “It’s gonna be sad.”
As Nurse spoke, his brown terrier-poodle mix scampered through the door. Cirone reached into a pocket of his grocer’s apron and fed the dog two bits of kibble. “The customers are like family,” he said. The physical contents of Cirone’s store are, it could be said, a little ragtag. He stocks his shelves eclectically, placing a single bag of Belgian chocolate chips here, a can of Penzoil brake fluid there.
On Monday, he tried peddling a pair of used Tommy Hilfiger sneakers to a reporter. “Is that your size?” he said. “Good price.” Also for sale were a few used tennis balls, lightly scuffed; a box of Ralph Lauren cologne with a plaid pattern; a ruler; a corkscrew; and a pack of Ronson flints.
“Here we don’t have frozen food, we have frozen toilet paper,” Cirone said, pointing to the rolls wrapped in cellophane stacked in a disused freezer.
The veteran retailer seemed a little embarrassed by the shambolic state of his wares on Monday, pleading that it wasn’t usually like this.
“We’re on the way out,” he said. Big-box stores like the Valu-mart down the street have sapped his business in the past few years.
“It’s not easy like it used to be,” he said. “There’s so many big stores that take all the customers away.” It’s a painful exit for a man born to the grocery business. Back in Bari, Italy, his father sold wholesale produce: asparagus, walnuts, things like that. “I knew all the ins and outs,” Cirone said.
Their family came to Canada when Joe was 16. He’s never been back, unlike many of his siblings. “I’ve been tied up with the store,” he said.
The shop wasn’t his only preoccupation these 50 years: Cirone is a prolific family man, and he measures his tenure on Queen St. in offspring.
“Four kids later, nine grandkids later — we’re still here,” he notes.
His favourite perch, where he stands to do most of his business and most of his “chit-chat,” is a patch of sidewalk just outside the store. From there, he has a view of the lake, a sliver of waves visible through a frame of brick and concrete.
A deeply religious Catholic, with a newspaper clipping about Pope Francis tacked to his door frame, he treats his role in the neighbourhood like a vocation.
A local man with a clipped white moustache walked by Cirone’s store on Monday carrying a leather-bound copy of the New Testament. The two men made small talk that shifted quickly into a discussion of Scripture. “Treat your neighbour like yourself,” Cirone said.