The Excelsior’s Central Drug Store is joining a growing list of independent city drug stores to bid adieu. The nearly 60-year-old family-run business will shut down on July 15. The owner, pharmacist Jerry Tonelli, announced on Monday that he will retire.
“We’ve had a good run,” said Tonelli, who started working in his family’s pharmacy in 1978. Walking into the pharmacy, alongside baseball memorabilia, a photo of the teenaged Tonelli sits behind the counter in the shop with the caption “The delivery boy.”
Central Drug Store, with its jaunty neon sign, has been a mainstay on the corner of Mission Street and Santa Rosa Avenue since 1965. In that time, it has “outlasted Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid and mail order services,” Tonelli said. “Going out, I have no regrets. I think we did all we could for the neighborhoods and community.”…