After five decades, McCabe's Guitar Shop owners are retiring, citing coronavirus crisis
LOS ANGELES - After a night last week in which protesters and police clashed in Santa Monica, Esperanza Riskin clocked in early at McCabe's Guitar Shop, the store she co-owns with husband Bob in the city's West Pico District. She wanted to get a jump on the day. Espie, as she is known, was braced for the possibility that the famed instrument store and backroom performance space might at some point be vandalized.
She was also preparing to open for the day by organizing curbside pickup orders. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the store had been shuttered, which meant that until last week the countless working musicians who have treated the shop as a second home since its birth in 1958 couldn't access the objects of their desire, or get their own musical tools fixed, for a few months.
When, in March, the shop's first
