Sammy Dallal Matt Hill hands Josh Taxman his order from the deli at Lolita's grocery store at Eighth and Pearl Streets in Boulder.

Novels were inspiration behind downtown, Hill groceries' names

By Greg Avery, Camera Staff Writer
July 14, 2004

Customers walking amid its packed shelves or ordering sandwiches from the Lolita's grocery store deli in Boulder rarely seem curious about the origin of its name.

Who is Lolita?

Ask an employee, and one is told with a chuckle "there is no Lolita," and if you want to know more, ask the owners.

When coming up with a store name, owner Mike Gilliland could have turned to a utilitarian "Stuff Mart" or some other plain, uninspired label.

Instead, Gilliland confesses, the store at Eighth and Pearl streets takes its name from the Vladimir Nabokov novel about a 30-something pedophile's affair with a seductive 12-year-old girl.

First published 50 years ago and briefly banned in many countries, "Lolita" is considered one of the more controversial yet praised works of literature published in the last century.

The 19-year-old store's name, however, has never elicited much of a response.

"It's amazing how little people ask about it," Gilliland said.

The naming wasn't about an obsession with the fictional girl nicknamed "Lolita" in Nabokov's taboo-bending book, it was more an obsession with stories.

Gilliland is a former English major with a lasting penchant for great reads, said his wife, Libby Cook.

"He won't remember something from yesterday," Cook said, "but he'll remember every interesting character from a book he read 20 years ago."

The couple co-founded Wild Oats markets, but Gilliland left the company's management in 2001.

When it came to naming the three smaller Boulder groceries the couple opened in the mid-1980s, Gilliland wanted catchy women's names.

For his first store, which opened in 1984 at 1134 13th St., he came up with Stella's: A Deli Named Desire, drawing inspiration from Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire." Gilliland and Cook also named their daughter Stella.

The couple opened Lolita's downtown in 1985, and Delilah's Pretty Good grocery, at the corner of Ninth Street and College Avenue, in 1988 ≈ that name being a nod to the fictional "Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery" in Garrison Keillor's radio stories and book about Lake Wobegone.

The couple sold the two University Hill stores but still own Lolita's.

Gilliland planned to name a daughter Lolita, if he ever had a second one, but instead bestowed the moniker on a boat in addition to the store. While the grocery thrives, the boat didn't fare as well ≈ a hurricane sunk it a few years ago.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Greg Avery at (303) 473-1307 or averyg@dailycamera.com.