Issue 07
The Soda Populist
By Jeff PenaltyPhotos By Aaron Farley
Illustration By Camilla Zechetto
Have you ever found yourself bitching about your cable company’s decision to jack up its rates simply because it could? Has your blood ever boiled at the thought of major labels keeping good musicians down? Have you ever thrown your hands up in despair at the piss -poor choices on the ballot for any given American political office?
Take heart, comrades: John Nese is here to lead the revolution!
The owner of Galco’s Soda Pop Stop in the Los Angeles community of Highland Park, John trades in hard-to-find (if not impossible to- find)soda, carrying over 500 varieties. I walked into hiss tore assuming I’d be writing a fluff piece about fizzy sugar water, but I walked out with a startlingly vivid illustration of corporate oppress ion and the disturbing effect it has on every aspect of our lives.
I start by asking John, “Why soda?” He answers with a smile: “ I got mad.”
John’s story is an American fable. He inherited the family grocery business from his father, but, like all independent grocers, he found his store struggling to compete with the price clubs and major supermarket chains. He started carrying a few rare varieties of soda as a means of keeping the business afloat.
Then one day a representative from Pepsi came into hiss tore to convince him to stock the brand. At the price the rep was offering (remember: no bulk wholesale discount for a small shop like John’ s), John would’ve had to charge more for Pepsi than the chain store down the street, and he would’ve felt like he was ripping off his customers. So he told the Pepsi rep he’d rather refer his customers to the chain.
The Pepsi rep said, “You can’t do that!” John replied, “Watch me.”
I listen intently as John explains the politics of soda pop. Since the soda industry giant shave the money and clout to purchase shelf space in all of the major grocery chains and price clubs, there ends up being no space—and little incentive—for stores to stock drinks produced by independent bottlers, even though dozens, if not hundreds, of such bottlers exist. So as consumers, we’re left with merely the illusion of true choice, our only options being two mediocre colas that basically taste the same. As John points this out, I’m suddenly stirred with both anger and sadness ,staring at aisle after aisle of proof that corporate rule has officially infected every single aspect of our lives, robbing us of our freedom of choice and holding us hostage to the whims of the CEOs.
My head already reeling, John begins my tour of hiss hop by telling me about Red Ribbon Root Beer. Until the ‘60s, root beer was made from sassafras root oil, which was taken off the market because it causes cancer. Red Ribbon uses sassafras bark (which, thankfully, doesn’t cause cancer) to give its root beer the most authentic taste possible. It even changes flavor as it ages!
Next, John lets me sample a mint julep, because unlike most of you 19th-century Southern plantation owners out there, I’ve never had one. John hands me a cold one, and it’s so refreshing that I’ve since found myself walking around and actually saying, “ I could really go for a mint julep right about now.”
I ’m also curious about Moxie, a company out of Maine that I previously thought had ceased to exist around the same time Hollywood started making “talkies.” Yet there on the shelves are several varieties of Moxie: Original Elixir, Cream Soda, Orange Cream Soda, and Cherry Soda. John swears by Moxie Cream Soda, declaring it the best cream soda on the market. He sends me home with a bottle that I later share with a friend, and neither of us find any reason to argue with John’s assessment. He also sends me home with a bottle of the Original Elixir, which he cautions I might not take to right away. “It’s a sipping soda,” he says, claiming that it will actually change flavors as I drink it.
And it does: each sip starts as a cola, morphs into a root beer, and leaves the aftertaste of some sort of evil black licorice potion from Satan’s private reserve. I can’t say I wasn’t warned.
“Have you ever had a pomelo?” John asks, uncapping a bottle of Quench and handing me this soda flavored with the first cousin of the grapefruit. Down another aisle, he holds up a bottle of Manhattan Special Orange Soda to show me the pulp at the bottom, proving that it’s flavored with actual oranges. Later, he also tells me about an angry phone call he placed to the makers of Tommyknockers Root Beer to complain about their switch from Madagascar vanilla to vanillin in their recipe. He tells me about the elderflower soda he’s anticipating from a Romanian bottler and the rose-flavored soda he ordered for Valentine’s Day. The possibilities and permutations seem endless . And, in fact, they are.
Upon a return trip to the Soda Pop Stop one afternoon to share the joys of a mint julep with a friend, I try to get John’s attention, but customers are coming at him from all sides, asking for his recommendations the way they would a seasoned sommelier at a Napa Valley winery. One customer tells John, “You’ve got me hooked on the Boylan’s Cola!” And I realize that we’re all there because we’ve had a door opened for us: a door to a whole world of fun, adventure, and taste. It’s a door that should have been open to us from the start but which was barred by capitalism gone sour.
“If it was about nostalgia it’d have been over in five years,” John says. “ It’s about freedom of choice.”
I ask him, “ Do you still get mad at Pepsi and Coke?” “ No,” he says. “ I thank ‘em every morning!”
On a third trip to the store to enlist yet another friend in the soda revolution, I find John outside, hammering something out of the sidewalk. When he’s done, he lets us sample a bottle of that much-anticipated rose soda (delicious, by the way) and explains that earlier in the day some workers had come by to install a newspaper box in front of hiss tore. He asked them for the proper paperwork from the city but they didn’t have it,so he told them to come back when they did. They started to install the box anyway, until he told them to bug off again. Then, rather than roll over and take it, he went outside to remove—by hand—the hunk of metal they’d just put in his sidewalk.
It’s a subtle gesture that somehow seems to sum up John’s attitude perfectly. His pride in his business and his individualist spirit practically amount to a Rockwell portrait of what it i s—or rather, what it should be—to be an American. It makes me think back to the way he concluded our very first conversation with an assertion that practically made me want to salute him:
“Am I Don Quixote? No. The important thing is that people have choices. Not just with drinks, but with everything they do.”
As I shake his hand to say goodbye, he adds with a smile: ”Don’t get me started on the education system . . .”