Found Treasure: San Gregorio General Store

August 18, 2023 – This place has “Found Treasure” written all over it. 

Or more accurately, it has “‘Wake Up! The world’s on fire! —Ferlinghetti,” “‘Please, I can’t breathe’ —George Floyd” and “San Gregorio General Store” written all over it. 

That lettering—appearing on the elegant windows of a historic looking spot—inspired an illegal U-turn to discover what lies inside. 

Which in turn led to the landslide.

San Gregorio, population 200-ish, sits north of Santa Cruz, just past Pescadero, on the outer edges of Edible Monterey Bay’s range geographically, and at the center of Found Treasures’ soul spiritually.

Its general store, meanwhile, sits at San Gregorio’s practical, literal and figurative center—a connection that deepened when COVID intensified needs for local resources and the CZU Lightning Complex Fire evacuation area set up across the street.

In its southeast corner appears the town post office, about the size of a bathroom, and in its northwest corner tucks a small but serviceable grocery section. Upstairs is the owners’ apartment—by legend a former speakeasy and dance hall. 

Within its wide walls and beneath its high ceiling gather everything you need and nothing you don’t. 

Note the vintage bar—wait, the store’s also a saloon!?—the popcorn machine (free popcorn on Fridays!), the indoor and outdoor stages for live music on the weekends, the regulars (both human and canine), the woven-fabric-cover journals in various styles and sizes, the fireplace with the tall crooked stovepipe, the snarky magnets reading things like “Has anyone tried unplugging the country and plugging it back in?” 

For this pilgrim, it was like walking into a new acquaintance’s house, seeing the choice of books, art, totems and furniture then wondering, Can we be besties? 

And the hits keep coming: haiku magnet kits, handmade textiles, literature collections, thumb harps and walking sticks, vintage puzzles of scientifically drawn butterflies, Lee jeans as tall as a delivery truck and Audobon Society-certified stuffed animals. 

In short, it’s an all-out landslide.

“Who curates all this? Is there a curator? Are you the curator?” I asked a staffer. “This is incredible.” 

“The curator is making coleslaw right now for pulled pork sandwiches tomorrow night,” she replied.

I might’ve whispered a sweet hallelujah. It just keeps getting better.

Austin Cattermole grew up at the General Store and met his wife KC Hatcher at Manuel F. Cunha Intermediate School in Half Moon Bay, where their youngest son started sixth grade yesterday.

Hatcher was making the coleslaw as part of food specials available Friday through Sunday to pair with the live music. (Last week was pulled pork sandwiches, both porcine and vegan, this weekend chana masala curry with naan.) 

After two decades in Oakland practicing law and doing graphic design, respectively, Cattermole and Hatcher decided to move back home amid early COVID to help run the store. 

She credits her in-laws, George and Joey Cattermole, with inspiring the selection—and George still helps with the magnets, books, stickers and t-shirts.

“Our goal is to honor what they had in place, with politics, art, literature and the environmental aspects of the store,” she says. “It’s such a big store. There’s so much we can do.”

Of late that’s included redoing the tongue and groove fir wood floors. Going forward it involves plans for more local produce.

Joey’s looking on from a different plane. Her son, daughter-in-law and grandkids spent every weekend of her nine-month pancreatic cancer illness visiting, cooking and maximizing family time. 

After she passed in January 2020, Hatcher describes a few “normal” weeks at home trying to figure out how to support George through the loss of his partner of 50 years. 

“When COVID hit, and stayed, it was a no brainer,” she says. “We had always planned to come back to do this. 2020 gave us the window.”

I hadn’t scouted the full 3,000 square feet of the ground floor when I heard a thump. 

Not just any thump. My favorite thump. Leather hide against wood, then the staccato spill I was hoping might follow. 

Dice. 

At the bar I asked if a stranger could join the next game of “1-4-24,” which (of course) happens to be one of my favorite games. 

They said yes. It was a friendly group, flanked by dogs and welcoming barkeep Jesse. 

I felt almost guilty winning on my first turn, because with this discovery—and a bag of gifts I bought for friends and family in my bag—I already had.