A&B SPORTING GOODS CLOSING
North Park institution, run by three generations of the Schloss family since 1941, another casualty of pandemic
Gregg Schloss isn’t quite sure what he’ll do after he locks the doors on his 79-year-old A&B Sporting Goods store in North Park for the very last time Dec. 31.
The 61-year-old merchant hadn’t planned on closing the shop that his grandfather, David, opened in 1941 and his father, Joe, carried on full time until his death five years ago. Unfortunately, the pandemic has forced his hand.
Most youth and some high school sports have been canceled since last spring, eliminating half of the store’s income. And extended closures due to county health orders have decimated sales and changed customers’ shopping habits. For each of the past five months, Schloss said he has taken money out of his personal savings to cover the shop’s rent, and he can’t afford that anymore.
“I could go broke trying to save a sinking ship. Closing will be a weight off my shoulders,” Schloss said on Tuesday, the day after he announced the closure on the store’s Facebook page. “It’s been very difficult. But I knew the time would come someday. I couldn’t keep working seven days a week by myself forever. So now with what’s going on, it just makes it easier for me.”
Neighborhood fixture
For fans and customers, A&B Sporting Goods was always more than just a neighborhood store and
sports curio shop where North Park moms and dads could buy uniforms, gloves and other equipment for their kids. The 1,550-squarefoot corner shop at 3027 University Ave. was a part of the community fabric. Customers who came with their parents decades ago as children are now grandparents buying for their grandkids.
One of those longtime customers is John D’Acquisto, who pitched for six major league teams, including the San Diego Padres, during in his 10-year career. Now 68, D’Acquisto said he got his very first baseball glove, a Mickey Mantle Rawlings, and his first cleats at A&B when he was 8 years old. He wishes the North Park community would rally around the store before it’s gone.
“They’re a landmark business, and I think the community should help them,” said D’Acquisto, who grew up in North Park. “When I was a kid, they were the small corner mom-andpop store that could get you anything you needed for your sporting goods. It was the only shop around like that, and they had really good prices for the families. It was a prime fixture in the neighborhood.”
Besides good prices, A&B was also the place where North Park residents came to chat with Joe “Mr. North Park” Schloss, who worked at the store from 1946 until just six weeks before his death at age 88 on Nov. 25, 2015.
Joe coached for the North Park Little League for 55 years, a history of service recognized by the city in 2016 when a street near Morley Field was renamed Joe Schloss Way. His son, Gregg, said it really never mattered what merchandise was being offered at A&B because customers would buy whatever Joe was selling.
“He had a lot of built-in charm and a good, warm heart that made people feel like whenever he was talking to them, they were the only thing he cared about,” Schloss said. “He always told me, ‘Don’t be a big shot and try to load people up with things they don’t need just to make a big sale.’ He believed if you treated customers honestly and with kindness, they would always come back, and they did.”
Truly one of a kind
As Joe got older, he had a hard time standing behind the counter all day, so instead he’d sit in a metal folding chair not far from the front door to greet and chitchat with visitors. That chair is empty now, but it still sits in the same spot in Joe’s memory. Gregg ’s older brother, Rick, said his brother did a great job stepping into the shoes of a local legend, but the closure couldn’t be avoided. Over the past 20 years, virtually all of the older retail shops along University Avenue have closed and been replaced by restaurants that only generate foot traffic at night, when A&B is closed.
“People hearing the news about closing are coming in here today crying, just like when Dad died,” Rick Schloss, 65, said on Tuesday. “It’s a one-of-a-kind store, old-school like in the 1950s, and for some people it’s like their childhood is going away.”
The Schloss family got into the retail business in 1939 when David Schloss opened a radio store on University Avenue in North Park. Two years later, he purchased a second nearby business, AB Appliance, not for its merchandise but for
its name — which would be one of the first businesses customers would find in their alphabetized phone book. Over the years, the name morphed from AB to A-B to finally A&B.
During World War II, appliances were hard to come by, since U.S. factories had been requisitioned for the war effort. Instead, A&B started specializing in sporting goods. After the war, where Joe had served in the Navy in the Pacific theater, he took over the business, which relocated a few times before settling in its current location in the early 1960s.
Because of Joe’s involvement in North Park Little League beginning in 1957, he started decorating the shop with framed photos of his teams and their plaques and trophies. In the 1970s, he started filling every inch of bare wall that remained with promotional posters of professional athletes. Over the years, the store became almost a museum of local and national sports history, a quirky look that Gregg — who began working full time in the shop in 1982 — refused to change, even after his father died.
“The first time people walk in the store, they always go, ‘Whoa, look at this place,’ ” Schloss said. “We liked that it wasn’t like any other store they’d ever seen.”
Next chapter
Mingled in between shelves of new sports gear are framed photos of Don Coryell and the San Diego Chicken, posters of boxer Muhammad Ali, basketball star Darryl “Chocolate Thunder” Dawkins and quarterback Ken Stabler. There’s a sign for San Diego native Ted Williams’ “Creamy Root Beer,” an antique ice skate, vintage athletic shoes, and a shelf of weathered sports books that include baseball announcer Harry Caray’s 1989 memoir “Holy Cow!” and MLB coach Billy Martin’s 1987 autobiography “Billy Ball.”
Over the years, many customers have asked to buy some of A&B’s vintage posters and sports memorabilia, but they weren’t for sale. Now that the shop is closing, Schloss said he’ll part with everything, even the oldfashioned cash register and the retro rotary-dial phone on the wall. The only thing he’ll have a hard time parting with is a 1978 “Bombs Away” poster of San Diego Chargers Dan Fouts, Kellen Winslow and John Jefferson dressed in bomber jackets to celebrate the team’s thenfamed aerial offense. Schloss spent three years on the Chargers’ training room staff before coming to work at A&B, and he treasures those memories.
Schloss said he doesn’t have a plan for what happens when Jan. 1 arrives, and he’s not old enough to retire. He’s hoping some of the customers he’s served over the past four decades might be able to help him find a new job.
“Maybe there’s a company out there that could use my services. And to all the moms and dads, I’d like to thank them for coming into the store over the years because, hopefully, they liked our products and our service.”