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(Photo: Joshua Yospyn/TBD)

The Giant at 1414 8th St. NW closes its doors today, and there are plenty who say they won’t miss it. Never a beauty, the low-slung, aqua-topped store with the brown brick face gets knocked for lousy produce, occasionally surly service, and serpentine lines. Rodent control issues dogged the market during health inspections. “Convenience” became the one regular feather in the Shaw Giant’s cap, though calling a neighborhood grocery store “convenient” is akin to calling an unfashionable garment “washable.”

But in its 32-year history, the O Street Giant, as it was often called, wasn’t always regarded with sneers or dotted with mice droppings. When it opened on Oct. 10, 1979, the store was declared a triumph for a neighborhood still recovering from riots and struggling with crime. The Washington Post printed that it “symbolizes the transformation that has occurred in Shaw, once the city’s worst slum.” Then-mayor Marion Barry cut a white satin ribbon and proclaimed, “It’s the good times for Shaw.”

According to reports at the time, the O Street Giant was the first new grocery store to open in the District in 10 years. Post writer LaBarbara Bowman noted its “gourmet foods”—including caviar, pickled mushrooms, and Swedish pancake mix—and “gourmet produce”—pomegranates and papayas. For less discerning shoppers, the store offered “pork and beef neckbone, large galvanized trash cans and large packages of rice and beans.” These diverse offerings, it was predicted, would serve both Shaw’s poor and its newly returning middle-class residents.

Israel Cohen, then Giant’s president and CEO, spoke of the “mutual commitment to cleanliness, orderliness and fairness” required by both Giant and shoppers if the store was to succeed. “I promise you Giant will do its part,” he said.

How clean and orderly the store remained is a matter of debate. The chipped floor tiles and heaps of black bananas look less than first world. (Indeed, Giant regular Elizabeth Hughes says while grocery shopping in an impoverished, violent Mexican town, she “realized that this grocery store was 10 times nicer than our neighborhood Giant.”) Inspections from the D.C. Dept. of Health turned up less than flattering violations over the years, including a rodent problem in 2009. The store still symbolizes a neighborhood in transition—one that’s transitioning so fast, this once-classy store failed to keep up with evolving standards of what a supermarket is supposed to be.

“That Giant was awful,” says Shamik Trivedi, who used to live on O between 9th and 10th. “Long, slow lines. Bad produce.” Andrew Bossi struggles to offer stories about his experiences at the store because “my memories largely revolve around standing in line.” The twin offenses of impossible lines and poor produce earned the store a reputation as one of the worst in the District.

But the O Street Giant still conjures some praise, begrudging and enthusiastic, from shoppers, who will be left without a full-service grocer until the CityMarket at O is complete. (Giant is running a shuttle to another store several days a week.) Bossi appreciated that Adam & Eve cranberry juice was always in stock. Em Hall acknowledges the lines and subpar selection but praises the employees.

“What I like about this store is that the people who work there are part of the neighborhood,” she writes by email. “There’s one supervisor…who I regularly see on the G8 bus. She always keeps a close eye on the cashiers and is quick to respond. She always makes a point to say hi to me, even though we only know each other from the store and the occasional bus ride.” Hall concludes, “As imperfect as it is, this was ‘my’ grocery store, and I’ll miss it.”

Trivedi also has a story about the O Street Giant staff. “I was trying to buy a brand of yogurt I like, and they were out,” he says. “The stock guy felt so bad about it that he told me to take a few other yogurts and drop his name when I got to checkout—that they would be on him. I figured what the hey, and to my surprise it worked.”

“But besides that,” he adds, “good riddance.”