Rugged wilderness, under one roof

LOVINGLY DISPLAYED behind a plastic window in a back corner of San Pedro’s Union War Surplus, the French Officer’s Kitchen was a stopper. I had never seen, thought about or desired one -- and at a couple of dozen pieces, the combo would be tough for backpacking without a wheelbarrow -- but still I stood transfixed, as if peering into a Foreign Legion lunch tent. The kit featured every aluminum utensil needed for a Cordon Bleu feed while in hostile territory, plus a gold coffee grinder. I didn’t have to buy it -- or the Czech field dental kit, loaded with all-purpose pliers -- to get what I came for: a shopping adventure.

Before Gore-Tex, REI shops and big-box sports outlets, there was the army surplus store: the original outdoor emporium, gateway to a bazaar of military castoffs and exotic miscellanea guaranteed to whisk you far from the shores of dichondra and stucco.

For a good half-century after these military outlet stores started to show up, just after World War I, they were the primary outfitters for campers, hikers and wannabe expeditionaries.

In the ‘50s, my dad picked up the family’s military-issue threadbare sleeping bags at a surplus warehouse in downtown L.A. I remember the place vividly -- absolutely cavernous, like a hangar, with shelves piled to the ceiling, sleeping bags hanging from the rafters. It was festive, like a carnival, except I didn’t know what a carnival was then. I was 3, which says something about the impression a surplus store in full anarchic regalia can leave. In fact, that day in the canvas forest was so singular I do believe it might be my earliest memory.

By the time I was in college, surplus joints were equipping my adventures to outbacks and exotic outposts. In a photo of me climbing a glacier in Switzerland, I’m a surplus runway model -- thermal long-sleeve shirt, knit cap, work boots.

In the tidy, orderly world of American retail, the surplus store has always purveyed a beautiful chaos, the ethos of insurrection.

It’s not just the camo outfits and machetes, or the precarious slopes of olive-colored goods threatening to avalanche at any moment, but the rebellious vibe of the duds themselves: This is gear to ditch polite society in, to get dirty in, discover remote outposts, take your life back from duty and obligation and be the rugged individual said to be our birthright but foreclosed by urban paychecks and corporate straitjackets.

The retail assault of the last few decades -- the rise of outdoors stores and big-box cost-cutters such as Wal-Mart and Costco -- have thinned the ranks of army surplus outlets. But there are still a few around Los Angeles where the spirit of iconoclastic wanderlust lives on.

At Union War Surplus, an institution in San Pedro since 1946 (Motto: “If you need a battleship or a hunting knife, we have it or will get it�), manager Jeff Daquila has kept the maverick spirit and spontaneity of the tradition alive.

It’s not only customers who never know what they’ll find on the shelf. “Whoa! An ice gripper! I haven’t seen that for a couple of years,� he says, busting up, as we stumble across a box of crampons.

Following in the whiskers of ZZ Top-style bearded owner “Cheerful� Al Kaye -- who started Union War Surplus in 1946 with his brother -- the goateed, tattooed Daquila, in black T-shirt and long shorts, looks as if he stepped out of a thrash-metal band. A Union staffer for 15 years, he runs a laid-back ship crammed to the ceiling with army-issue butt bags, flight jackets, water cans, rifle slings, lanterns, tents, air mattresses, kids camouflage gear, Italian rucksacks, Russian sailor shirts, duffel bags.

“Once you walk in the door, you can’t even see that far because there’s so much stuff,� he says. “It’s almost like going to Disneyland for the first time.�

His customers include campers, local longshoremen, vets, survivalists, artists, actors and rappers. The place is a refuge from big-brand hegemony, inflated prices and obsolescent products, a time capsule of old Main Street and utilitarian Americana.

Squeezing down a packed aisle at Union, I looked up and, hanging raggedly from the ceiling in surplus-store style, was a display of white thermal undershirts -- the very same unvarnished model I wore amid Swiss crevasses. It was like hearing Vin Scully’s voice. I felt a righting of bearings.

“I have people who bring their sons in here because their dad brought them in here,� says Daquila. “They say, ‘Remember that smell?’ Sometimes they don’t even want to buy anything. They just want to show their kids.�

Daquila’s made a few allowances to the modern world -- a women’s section of fashion hats and Dickies, some rock band T-shirts, an Internet site that’s reaching customers around the world (though buying army surplus via a website is like tasting the cuisine at your favorite restaurant by perusing the takeout menu).

Shopping surplus is all about the experience, the theater of possible exploits awaiting us if we dare. Unlike the canned action-lifestyle fare pitched at the chain stores, Daquila’s stacks of unhyped, off-label products, timeless work clothes and oddball military artifacts speak for themselves what the others too loudly proclaim: authenticity. It’s an invitation, in flannel, denim and wool, to keep lives real.

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Joe Robinson can be reached at [email protected].