Within a Three-Month Period In 1985, Three of San Marino’s Most Iconic Businesses Opened Their Doors and, Thankfully, Have Never Left
“It was the 70s,” Julie Campoy says. “Families didn’t get divorces then and moms certainly didn’t work!”
But hers did. On both counts.
“My mom was a tremendous cook,” Julie says, making “tremendous” a tasty, 20-second word. “She would cook in our home kitchen while my sisters and I cleaned and loaded up the family wagon. Mom would go to a catering party. The community was very, very good to us. She would do maybe a party a month and her business began to snowball. As time went by, she got some partners and they opened… ‘this.’”
Julie stretches her arms to full span as she sits at her favorite table in the geographic middle third of Julienne, with the original flooring and other accents from the restaurant’s September, 1985 opening still in place.
Gene Orlowsky was a partner in a chiropractic clinic in Pasadena.
“We were up on North Lake Avenue,” Orlowsky explains sharply, as if this all happened yesterday. “It was 1984, and we were robbed three nights in a row.”
You can’t help but wonder if he’s serious. He is.
“The first night they took the computers,” Orlowsky recalls. “The second night, the typewriters. The third, all the physical therapy equipment. The next day, the owner put bars on all the windows. [San Marino resident] Tom Sullivan was a patient of mine and he said ‘you need to be in San Marino.’ I fulfilled my contract and opened my own office – right here – on July 1, 1985.”
Tony Jacoy was a senior military aviation contracts administrator helping to build, of all things, the Stealth Bomber.
“I had a friend in the clothing business,” he remembers. “I started peddling for him out of the back seat of my car. Business was so good that, soon, I turned a spare bedroom into a showroom. I always wanted to be my own boss and open my own business. Through Gene [Orlowsky] I met Tom Sullivan and he said ‘if you don’t make a move now you never will and you will be sorry you never made it.’ In 1985, I opened a store at the corner of Euclid and Mission and moved to my current location in 1992. And Tom was right. I’m glad I did it.”
Different circumstances led to similar decisions and the three Mission Street anchor businesses–Julienne, GEO Chiropractic Clinic and P.M. Jacoy Menswear–are still at the top of their respective games.
Orlowsky says that when he goes across the street for the occasional lunch at Julienne, “I see patients who just left my office and others who have appointments in the afternoon.” He now has 10 employees and three chiropractors.
Campoy has 55 employees–three of whom have been at Julienne for over 30 years and 10 more who have worked there for more than 20.
“There is another big group who have worked here between 10 and 20 years,” she quipped. “They are the ‘new people.’”
Campoy said that other than a few tweaks here and there, “the menu hasn’t changed in 30 years.”
“There would be a revolt,” she says with a laugh. “And in many cases it’s the same people making the same things.”
Jacoy said the store he opened in the trunk of his car has become so popular that “when my wife and I go to Old Town Pasadena, every time we turn the corner, we run into one of my customers. Our life here is one big circle.”
Life on Mission has been a lot more than scones, spinal alignments and pleated pants. The street looks little like it did in the mid-80s and these merchants’ shared attraction has irretrievably changed the face of the neighborhood. Campoy, Orlowsky and Jacoy all referenced the “new” parking lot that replaced a filling station at the corner of Mission and Old Mill and greatly opened up the area for new businesses. All three have worked with the city to assure the measured growth of the area and allay parking concerns throughout the neighborhood for businesses and residents alike.
Sullivan, who developed the building Orlowsky and Jacoy now inhabit, thinks the three operations have been a treasure for the San Marino business community.
“They have done so much for that area,” said Sullivan, who helped transform the former Jurgensen’s Market into a thriving marketplace. “Julienne is a destination, make no mistake about it. People come from all over to dine there and Gene and Tony have clients from just about everywhere. It’s amazing what that area has become, all up and down Mission Street for that matter, and they are very much responsible for the growth of the area.”
