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The Old 97s blare from the small house speakers inside the Broadway boutique Moss&Rock<\/a> while owner Cat Madrid-Barone who\u2014far from acting like I am there to inquire about her store’s successful first year\u2014immediately eyed me up and down as I stepped through the door.<\/p>\n “Nice boots,” she said with a mischievous smile, wagging her finger at my rolled up Levi’s and leather work boots before settling both hands on her hips, proudly showing off her Harley Davidson stretch top. Her approval can easily make anyone beam.<\/p>\n “Did you see this?” she asked quickly, orienting me towards a classically tailored blue’n’red plaid shirt, her three-part slitted sheer dress cascading behind her. “I wish I still had the bandana print shirt from [East Los Angeles designer] Rik Villa<\/a>\u2014ugh, you would just… Just rock it.”<\/p>\n She continued to layer more and more pieces across her arm for me to try on\u2014some DeLascia tweed pants, a leather-sleeved denim jacket, some People’s Movement boots made entirely of recycled material\u2014whisking back and forth between the dressing room and the racks. And then she pauses, briefly closing her eyes and singing lightly to the song playing by the Left Lane Cruisers.<\/p>\n “Did I tell you I want a bigger place for bands to play? Somewhere in San Francisco. I want the music aspect to be almost half the business\u2014a venue-retail space. ‘Cause I’m doin’ it here and it’s workin’,” she said before going to back to humming along with the music, noting indirectly her store’s prolific hosting of bands from Long Beach and beyond.<\/p>\n These small moments with Madrid-Barone\u2014whose demeanor is a perfect sense of humility and confidence\u2014solidify her as maintaining the chill aura that is the Long Beach vibe. She scoffs at the idea of a mall being built in Long Beach\u2014”I would die<\/em>“\u2014as quickly as she rattles a list of why Long Beach rocks. And with regards to the city she chose to do business in, she is unapologetically forward that personality-wise, people identify with where they live.<\/p>\n “Long Beach is the<\/em> city to support small business. There’s this style to Long Beach that is almost untouchable. Long Beach…,” she paused, looked up, and smiled. “It isn’t too contrived. It hasn’t become this mockery of itself. Well, there are a few spots where I look and I’m like, ‘Ehhh’\u2014and I’m talking about the Pike, to be honest. But even with that, L.A. is too infiltrated and Orange County, well, they’ll never get it. Long Beach is just that perfect amount of cool.”<\/p>\n She attributes this “perfect amount of cool” not to necessarily the youngins of Long Beach, but the rich history of our city and its large population of older folk.<\/p>\n “Older people and old things make Long Beach cool\u2014it’s the history that makes Long Beach a gem,” she says casually. “From everything like the architecture to the old man shufflin’ down Broadway who tells me he loves my spiked corset.”<\/p>\n It perhaps here, where she straddles fresh fashion with an old-soul’s appreciation of history, that Madrid-Barone has been able to harness her first year of business.<\/p>\n “I’ve been in retail for sixteen, seventeen years, doing everything from sweeping the floors to buying to running twelve stores… But I wasn’t happy. I knew I would have my own store but I just didn’t know how. And here I am,” she said with a smirk, crushing the tip of her menthol cigarette. “And this one single year\u2014over all the others\u2014has just been a roller coaster ride.”<\/p>\n And to celebrate that roller coaster ride, she is inviting Long Beach to come visit her store tonight, take a gander and\u2014as always with Ms. Cat\u2014listen to some fantastic music, which she noted drives everything she buys in the store.<\/p>\n She’ll be hosting La Mirada-based Moonsville Collective<\/a>\u2014the band vying for best live band in next year’s OC Music Awards when they perform January 29 at the Constellation Room and hope to make it to the finals at House of Blues Anaheim\u2014as well as Long Beach bluegrass favorite Sawtooth<\/a>.<\/p>\n “A lot of people in fashion are driven by what’s in fashion now<\/em>\u2014and I am so unconnected,” she explained. “I don’t have a TV, I don’t keep up with that kinda stuff. I almost dont know what’s in because I just wanna be driven by what’s within me.”<\/p>\n Moss&Rock’s first anniversary show will take place tonight, November 16, at 7PM and will run until 10PM. The event is free and open to the public. Moss&Rock is located at 2752 E. Broadway. (562) 438-9354<\/em><\/p>\n {FG_GEOMAP [33.7655946,-118.15940710000001] FG_GEOMAP}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Moss&Rock boutique owner Cat Madrid-Barone talks to the Post<\/em> about Long Beach’s perfect amount of cool, the role of music in fashion and the roller-coaster ride that has been her first year of business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":69365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4180"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4180"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/catmadridbarone.jpg\")
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