David Weiner (whom nearly everyone, me included, called "Dave") was surprised in 1989 when Gus Van Sant asked for permission to film part of his movie "Drugstore Cowboy" at the Nob Hill Pharmacy at NW 21st Avenue and Glisan Street, where Dave had been doing business since 1933. (The pharmacy itself had been there since 1892.) Then he learned why Mr. Van Sant wanted to use the Nob Hill Pharmacy as a setting: it had barely changed inside since the 1950s, the time period Mr. Van Sant wanted to evoke. Through the double push doors (no automation here) lay the patent medicines to the left, the greeting cards to the right, and the pharmacy counter in the back, all pretty much as it was in the 1940s and 1950s except that the soda fountain had closed in 1959. Even the telephone had a dial, not buttons. (That eventually changed, but not much else inside did.)
To Mr. Van Sant, the pharmacy (and perhaps Dave too) was a period piece, a business frozen in time for decades. I don't think Dave saw it as unique at the time; his pharmacy was one of many owner-operated pharmacies that had dotted Portland, some independent and others franchised by Rexall. Two others from the era were Morris Leton's pharmacy on East Burnside (called simply "Morry Leton's Pharmacy") and the Irving Street Pharmacy, owned by Milton Olshen, a few blocks from Nob Hill and its main competition.
Today a pharmacy is a Rite Aid or Walgreens chain store, or a corner in the back of a grocery store, where people take pills out of big bottles, put them into small bottles, and affix labels to the small bottles. Back then, pharmacies had other businesses attached to them, not groceries like today. Uncle Leon Laquedem's pharmacy in the Bronx, like many others, had a soda fountain -- ice cream floats made the pills go down better, I suppose. Some, like Nob Hill, sold candy and greeting cards. Uncle Sam Laquedem's pharmacy, in a small town in New York, also sold sporting goods.
Dave, who died on April 27 at the age of 94, would have told you that there was nothing special about Nob Hill Pharmacy. It was doing the same things it had done in 1933, when he bought it. Dave might have told you also that there was nothing special about himself: there was nothing special about operating the same business at the same location for more than 60 years, or being married to the same woman for 70 years, or living in the same house for 65 years.
He was, of course, wrong: what may have seemed normal in 1933 had become unusual constancy by the time his family closed the business earlier this year. A casual observer might say that he and the pharmacy fell behind the times; someone who knew him might say that the times fell behind him.
