Another vacancy in Village West

Cold Stone Creamery in Claremont's westside-of-Indian-Hill development (the name for which nobody can agree on) closed Sunday, the latest in a string of failures there that includes children's clothing store Chloe and Hunter and women's clothier Peyton Grey.

(Tally for Men, meanwhile, has had a "going out of business" sale since last spring. It's like a hammy death scene that goes on and on.)

Loraine Ong, the high school student in the Cold Stone ice cream flavor contest, alerted me to the store's closing. It certainly puts a crimp in her strategy, but she's shifted her "home store" to the location by the Edwards 14 theaters on Ontario's Mountain Avenue.

To help her out, I had gone to Cold Stone on Sunday for a Heath Wave. There was no indication it was the store's last day.

The bright side of this is that Bert and Rocky's won. That's the locally owned ice cream shop that's a fixture at Yale and Bonita just two blocks from Cold Stone. I prefer Bert and Rocky's anyway so I'm glad if only one store could survive, it's that one.

Some businesses in Village West/Village Square/Village Expansion appear to be thriving, by the way. Jamba Juice, Coffee Bean and La Parolaccia seem perpetually busy, Le Pain and Kazama are never empty and around 4 p.m. Sunday there was, hearteningly, a line of 20 people outside the Laemmle theater ticket window.