El Torito Market / Goodies Corner

Overview

Some Fort Bragg corners get remembered by their street names. This one got remembered by its business name.

Today, El Torito Market gives 144 North Franklin Street its current life, with fresh produce and Mexican specialty foods listed at this address. It is one of those useful neighborhood markets that keeps a corner active — the kind of place where a building's history keeps moving forward instead of sitting still.

But for a lot of Fort Bragg people, this will always be Goodies Corner.

Location

The building sits at 144 North Franklin Street, at a corner that became familiar enough in daily life to earn its own shorthand. The original post described how the Goodies name became so attached to the place that the whole intersection started answering to it.

That says a lot. A business does not become a corner name unless people used it constantly, met there, shopped there, ate there, rode bikes there, and folded it into their regular lives.

History

The comments opened up the older layers of this address.

Before Goodies, many people remembered Louie's Pizza, with Louie Freitas making pizza, Alfredo, meatball sandwiches, pizza bread, kale soup, and the kind of food people were still talking about decades later. Some memories placed Louie's Pizza back in the 1960s and 1970s, while others remembered Arthur's Corner, tied to the Fratis / Arthur family history.

There were stories of kids eating there, families gathering there, a father dancing on a tabletop, and even the wilder bar-and-dancer stories that always seem to survive best in local memory.

Goodies brought another major chapter. People remembered the café, burgers, ice cream fountain, candy cigarettes, candy buttons, and the childhood power of riding a bike there with one dollar and leaving with a bag full of candy. Others remembered working there in the 1980s, the Freitas family connection, and the way the business gave people with disabilities a place to work.

That is the kind of detail that turns a business from just a store into a community memory.

The building also had later commercial lives. The comments remembered it becoming connected to The Floor Store, used as a showroom and office, with some interior décor and home-furnishing items as well. That fits the pattern of a Fort Bragg building that kept being reused — food, café, candy, pizza, flooring, market — each use leaving its own layer behind.

The Building Today

Today, El Torito Market continues the building's role as a useful corner business. The current market keeps the address active with food, groceries, produce, and everyday shopping.

That current use fits the history well. This corner has long been tied to food, errands, neighborhood stops, and people coming in for something familiar. The name has changed, but the building is still doing a practical job for the town.

Why It Matters

This address matters because it is not just one business. It is a corner that changed from older creekside ground to pizza place, family restaurant, café, candy stop, flooring showroom, and now El Torito Market.

One of the most interesting memories was not about the building at all, but the ground underneath it. A commenter remembered the area as a small gulch where Alder Creek ran, surrounded by redwoods and alders, before it was filled in when the pizza place was built. Another person remembered old bottles being found while digging nearby after a garage was torn down — beer bottles, whiskey bottles, a kerosene lamp, and more, with water hit several feet down.

Whether every detail can be fully documented or not, those memories point to something important: this corner may look like a normal town intersection now, but it sits on top of older landscape and older town use.

Goodies Corner may have changed names, but it clearly never stopped being a place people remembered.

Community Memories

Community memories connect this address to Louie's Pizza, Arthur's Corner, Goodies, The Floor Store, El Torito Market, pizza, Alfredo, meatball sandwiches, pizza bread, kale soup, burgers, ice cream, candy cigarettes, candy buttons, bike rides for candy, the Freitas family, the Fratis / Arthur family, ballet lessons, go-go dancer stories, the old gulch and Alder Creek, buried bottles, and the way the whole intersection became known as Goodies Corner.

Timeline

Earlier Landscape — Community memory recalls a small gulch where Alder Creek ran, surrounded by redwoods and alders.

1960s–1970s — Louie's Pizza / Arthur's Corner remembered at or near this address, with pizza, food, family gatherings, and bar memories.

1950s / Earlier Memory — Ballet lessons remembered in the building or location, with Angie Freitas as instructor.

1980s — Goodies remembered as a café, candy stop, burger place, ice cream spot, and neighborhood gathering place.

Later Years — Building remembered in connection with The Floor Store, showroom use, office use, and interior décor or home-furnishing items.

Present — El Torito Market operates at 144 North Franklin Street.

Sources: Original post text and photo provided by Gee Bee; comment thread provided by Gee Bee including contributor memories from Martin Scribner, Eric Carmichael, Sheila Stone Raymond, Kelly Hilliard, Dave Mathews, Richard Shafer, Brandi Cooper, Rus Jewett, Dina Fratis, Gary Koski, Aaron Scherbarth, Patricia Simon Martinez, Cindy VanWormer, Tina Krenov, Heather Capps, Nikolette Miller, Denise Hardcastle, Donna Winters, James Godwin, Sandra Liljeberg, Tammy Lowe, Jason Middleton Tupper, Wendy Loomis, and Linda Lester; Visit Fort Bragg El Torito listing; El Torito Market Facebook listing.