Features

The latest incarnation of Ozzie’s, the beloved soda fountain at the southwest corner of the College Avenue and Russell Street intersection in the Elmwood, has expired. 

Operator Mike Hogan served his last sandwiches on June 29, and scooped his last ice cream as he cleaned out the following day. 

Victoria Carter, who holds the lease on the former Elmwood Pharmacy, is searching for a new tenant to the run the institution that has been at the center of neighborhood life for decades. 

But for regulars like writer Marty Schiffenbauer, Hogan’s departure “is really sad.” 

For years a regular on Saturdays from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Schiffenbauer has made Ozzie’s a hangout even during periods in the past when the counter was closed and between operators. 

“It’s a great neighborhood institution,” he said, “and anyone who takes over will become an immediately celebrity.” 

He said, “You really need someone very special, because there’s no real money in it.” 

Times have been hard for both Ozzie’s and Carter. Faced with the minimal profit margins forced by HMOs and insurance companies that have left the prescription drug business in the hands of large merchants who can make their profits off other merchandise, Carter was forced to abandon her prescription business early last year. 

Since then, she has been restructuring her business to offer non-prescription medicines and gift shop items. 

Carter recently signed a new five-year lease with increased rents, and she, in turn, offered Hogan a lease with a modest increase that he realized he couldn’t pay and have any chance of making a profit, something he’d not been able to do since he reopened the shuttered fountain business. 

Hogan insisted that expanded hours offered the one hope for the soda fountain, allowing him to sell to the breakfast and lunch crowds, while Carter insisted that the main reason he couldn’t make a go of it was a lack of practical business sense. 

John Moriarty, proprietor of 14 Karats, a jewelry shop a few doors south of Ozzie’s on College, noted that expanded hours weren’t enough. Hogan made his hot food offerings on a Teflon coated electric griddle, but without a professional grill and hood—an investment of as much as $250,000—Hogan couldn’t serve enough to be profitable. 

The final days took an edgy turn, with Hogan offering customers a sheet offering his version of the reasons he was closing, followed by Carter’s demand that he stopped handing out the sheet, followed by her issuance of a written account of her own. 

Proposed mediation fell through, the lease expired, and Ozzie’s closed. 

There has been an Elmwood Pharmacy in the building since 1921, and a small soda fountain for most of those years. But it was Charles Osborne, who took over the soda fountain in 1950, who made the place a landmark institution. 

A World War II fighter pilot and ace, Osborne drifted leftward after arriving in Berkeley, and the fountain became a favorite hangout of Berkeley leftists. 

A 1982 announcement of radically increased rents mobilized the regulars into a campaign for commercial rent control that became the nation’s first when voters approved it that year. 

The institution lasted seven years before a court decision struck it down. Faced with higher rents, Osborne called it quits. By then he’d been serving the grandkids of some of his first customers. 

Carter’s father, Charles, consolidated his former College and Ashby pharmacy with the Elmwood in 1960, closing his old store in the process. After 26 years, he handed the business over to his daughter four years after Osborne’s departure. 

Others had tried before Hogan, and the regulars recruited Hogan after the business had been shuttered after the previous operator left. 

With the fountain once again closed, Carter is looking for a new operator and is asking other Elmwood merchants to help. 

If she has her way, Ozzie’s will be reincarnated yet again. 

For Hogan, closing was hard. “A lot of people came out,” he said. “They were very supportive and a lot of them were upset.” 

Hogan’s next step will be a move to Sacramento, followed by a period of recuperation before he heads on to his next venture. 

“I’m always optimistic,” Schiffenbauer said. “I’m not giving up totally, but I’m not very happy.”›