I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but there’s a giant bear on Carson St. on the eastern edge of Torrance.
The large animal stands watch from atop a 35-foot-high sign in front of Torrance Auto Repair at 1750 W. Carson. That’s not the original name of the business, as it turns out. But, before we get to that, a word about what the jolly yellow ursine character has to do with auto repair.
Founded in 1917, The Bear Manufacturing Co. of Rock Island, Illinois, started out as a luggage manufacturer. In the early 1920s, the company expanded into making tools for aligning automobile wheels, adopting the bear symbol as its logo.
Seeing its equipment catch on in auto garages, the company later created its own training school for mechanics, who then would display the “happy bear” logo at their shops to indicate that they’d taken the specialized wheel alignment training course.
With the growing dominance of the automobile in the 1920s and 1930s, the Bear school found itself training more and more mechanics. Virgel Bolles of Torrance was among those who took the course in the early 1940s.
Bolles then started his first business, hanging out a small bear sign at Virgel’s Wheel Alignment Service at 1530 Cravens Ave. near Marcelina in downtown Torrance in 1943. He operated the specialty shop as a part of Harvel’s Service Station for five years.
In January 1948, Bolles opened his own much bigger independent tire and wheel alignment shop, Virgel’s Torrance Bear Service, at 1750 Carson St. Its most visually arresting feature was the large sign near the street featuring a happy yellow bear holding the part that read “Virgel’s Wheel Alignment.”
Virgel’s bear sign wasn’t the only one around. His brother, Wallace, had opened Bolles Alignment Services on Atlantic Ave. in Lynwood in 1947. The business is still in operation as of this writing, and its sign still stands.
Gardena Bear Alignment Service also sports a large happy bear sign, this one in more of a light-brown hue. It remains standing at 13120 Crenshaw Blvd., outside the still-operating auto garage now known simply as Gardena Bear.
According to the RoadsideArchitecture.com website, about three dozen similar bear signs still exist, many of them in Southern California. The Bear Manufacturing Co. got bought out by a larger firm in 1970, and discontinued its training school shortly thereafter.
The bear logo survived, however. The Grateful Dead adapted the happy bear into its dancing bear logo in the 1970s. Bear Manufacturing was aware of the similarities between the two, but never took any legal action against the band.
As for Virgel Bolles, he lived on 174th St. in north Torrance for decades. The Texas native was a founding member of the Torrance Mounted Police group, and served as its captain. After his death, his son Clem took over management of the garage. He retired in 1989.
A couple years later, in 1991, the beloved bear came under serious attack from the City of Torrance. It all started when then-owner Richard Errington applied to the city for a permit to attach a smaller neon sign advertising a tire brand to the larger sign.
When city officials came out to inspect the site, they found the larger bear sign did not conform to city code sections governing signage passed in 1969. Among other things, it was way too tall, ten feet higher than allowed.
They argued that allowing such unregulated signs could lead to visual pollution on the city’s streets, with each business trying to outdo the other with larger and more garish signs.
Inspectors suggested moving the garage’s sign, or erecting a smaller one. “We’re hoping to work something out,” Monte McElroy of the city’s Department of Building and Safety told Daily Breeze reporter Dirk Broersma at the time. “I think everyone is in love with that bear.”
McElroy was right about that last part. The threat to the bear sign resulted in a public outpouring of support for keeping the bear sign as it was despite the violations, and, in the end, the city relented and allowed the sign to stay.
The Torrance Bakery helped Errington celebrate his successful campaign to keep the sign by baking him a custom cake with an image of the bear sign on it.
Since then, the shop has changed hands, and the original sign has been altered to read “Torrance Auto Repair” to reflect the current name of the business.
Sources:
Daily Breeze archives.
“Happy Bear Signs,” by Debra Jane Selzer, SCA Journal, Fall 2017, Vol. 35, No. 2.
Los Angeles Times archives.
RoadsideArchitecture.com website.
Torrance Press Herald archives.
