Just a mention of the word throws off James Oh, as if you've come looking for someone who moved out long ago.
"Riots here?" he says, pointing to his store, Tom's Liquor. "No, no. Riots long, long time ago."
Today, the shelves are neatly stocked, the floors are sparkling clean and marigold daisies blossom in the sun a few feet from his door. On the walls outside: "No graffiti at all," he says proudly.
Twenty years ago today, when Oh was in Germany clearing minefields for the Army, one of the nation's worst riots exploded in Los Angeles. Tom's Liquor, at the corner of Florence and Normandie avenues, was ground zero. Its looted beer and malt liquor fueled outrage at the intersection where white truck driver Reginald Denny was infamously beaten.
The youths who now dash in and out of the green-roofed building for chips and sodas bear only the faintest connection to those days. And many of the neighbors who lived through the violence have moved out or died or simply don't care to keep harping about the past.
But history's a tough thing to escape at Florence and Normandie.
Every April, as surely as the faithful flock to church for Easter, TV cameras descend on this corner to remind the world about the time when buildings burned, more than 50 people died and thousands were injured.
On a recent day outside Tom's, a woman known to all as Lil' Momma had had enough with the attention. She grabbed a reporter's notebook and ran off with it. Angrily, she raised a fist toward the intersection:
"Florence and Normandie, Florence and Normandie! What about Florence and Normandie? When are y'all just gonna drop it and leave us the hell alone?"
::
Oh knew little about Tom's Liquor when he and a few Korean investors took over two years ago.
He had heard only vaguely about the Rodney King beating, the police trial and the riots; about the previous Asian owners, whose relationship with the black clientele had always been, at best, lukewarm.
But if anyone tried to warn Oh with specifics, he didn't care to hear them.
"I don't focus on past," he says from behind the counter. "This is a different place now, and I am different person."
He installed bright lights to make the store seem more open. He filled shelves with family-friendly products, such as baby bottles, diapers and detergent. And by the register, for everyone to see, he put a framed portrait of himself, smiling big in his decorated Army uniform.
"I tell everybody who comes in here, 'Bring it on!'" the 62-year-old says, at ease in his new uniform: long camouflage shorts, a T-shirt and tennis shoes. "I trust my customers. I don't stare at them when they shop. I don't look at their clothes or where they have their hands. I don't argue if they don't have exact change. I just say, 'OK, you pay me next time, OK?' and I smile."
The respect he's earned shows as women flash him grins and men pat him on the back. They greet him with a loud 'Hey, Sarge!" or a "How you doin', Bring It On!"
"How you doin', homie?" Oh hollers back.
Despite the good vibes, people sometimes snap.
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