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For Tommy Gelinas, the San Fernando Valley is more than just a place to live. It’s his culture.
The lifelong Valley resident was born in Burbank and has lived in Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Mission Hills, Porter Ranch and Reseda.
“I was conceived in Sherman Oaks and popped out in Burbank. I was only there for a day, so I don’t know much about it,” Gelinas kidded.
He grew up riding skateboards on the sidewalks and BMX bikes on the many dirt tracks, eating meals at Pioneer Chicken, The White Horse Inn, Pup ‘N’ Taco, The Queens Arms, and many more. He watched the cars cruise down Van Nuys Boulevard on cruise nights and played pinball at arcades. He watched In Search of and the Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and was bitten by the history bug. “So driving around the Valley as a kid, I used to be curious about the old buildings, and I would ask my dad what they used to be.”
As the years passed, Gelinas, 58, focused on his business and family. His 20,000-square-feet screen-printing factory, which he founded in the early days of Valley Relics, focused on printing images on t-shirts and tote bags. But he never lost his love or fascination for the Valley.
After a friend suggested he find a hobby because he was working too much, he became obsessed with rescuing whatever he could from the iconic places he remembered from his youth. He’d take breaks from working at his t-shirt printing business and search the internet for all things Valley. He went to garage sales and asked people if they had any signs, photos, or interesting artifacts from the area. His collection started to grow and in 1999 he created the online Valley Relics Museum and Vault.
Photos, postcards, and ashtrays were the first items he collected, and soon he was saving large signs, arcade games — even cars — and just about any vintage Valley item from the garbage dump. In 2013, the Valley Relics Museum became a nonprofit and opened in its first brick-and-mortar location in Chatsworth. The museum moved in 2018 to its current location in hangers at the Van Nuys Airport. Even with the expansion, the museum can only display 30% of its collection at a time.
“There is a lot of Valley pride. I can remember Valley pride as far back as a kid,” Gelinas said. “People were talking about what used to be here, like the San Fernando Drag Strip, Devonshire Downs, where Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin played at Newport 69. You had all the early bicycle (BMX) tracks and bicycle manufacturers here.
“There was a huge car culture dating back to the late ’40s and early ’50s, with people cruising Van Nuys Boulevard. You had Lucille Ball, who lived in Chatsworth, and Clark Gable, Bob Hope, and the Warner brothers had homes and ranches here. The Valley had so much history,” said Gelinas.
He wants to save as much as possible, preserving the Valley’s rich history for generations to come. The collection is vast and keeps growing as new buildings replace the old and people donate relics: A wall of televisions and a diorama of a set from the movie “Ben Hur” — from the Encino home of Jack Webb — were donated and are now on exhibit; banknotes and ledgers dating to the late 1800s from some of the founders of the San Fernando Valley; two boxes containing donated documents, letters, and personal photos from Jayne Mansfield; a vintage working arcade game and a large sign from the Family Fun Arcade donated by Ralph Sehnert and his son Connor; a car from Malibu Grand Prix, a go-kart racing track popular in the 1980s; and an extensive collection of old BMX bicycles.
Gelinas believes that the Valley was the hub of cool.
“The Valley I believe, was the hub of everything cool,” he said. “The other side of the hill might argue that, but we were the ones draining pools to skateboard. We were the ones with all the BMX tracks and factories. We were Hollywood No. 2 with so many movies filmed here. It was the mecca of cool. The list goes on and on.”
Gelinas focuses on the San Fernando Valley but also saves relics from other areas in California. He has rescued the Mel’s Drive-In sign from the San Francisco restaurant where “American Graffiti” was filmed. Valley Relics also saved the sign from Premier Bowling, also in San Francisco.
Gelinas believes he is saving his culture, not just relics from the not-so-distant past. “If you talk to someone from another country like Germany, China or Thailand, their history is really old,” he said. “Think about the Ming Dynasty as an example. Then you come to someone like me, and you say, ‘Oh, you were born and raised here?’ What is my culture? What do I identify with? It’s something I think we lose sight of. The way that I navigate, the way that I think, and the way I act is from what I was exposed to here. My culture has been torn down, all that old stuff is disappearing, and it will be gone forever.”
So if you are a Valley kid and want to take a walk down memory lane, the Valley Relics Museum is just the place. They are funded by donations, entrance fees and renting space out for private events. There is also a gift shop, so if you need a Pioneer Chicken or Pup ‘N’ Taco shirt, they’ve got you covered.
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