The Majestic Returns (San Pedro Today)

The marble tables arrived in San Pedro long before Dustin Trani did.

They came from the steam room downstairs, slabs of Carrara that had been part of this building since 1926, when it opened as the Army and Navy YMCA. Soldiers and sailors came here after their shifts to lift weights, to box and wrestle in the gymnasium, and to run laps on the sloped track that still hangs, shelf-like, above the basketball court.

Dustin’s great-grandfather Filippo knew this building. So did his grandfather Jim Sr. They worked out here, used the steam room, and walked these halls when the paint was fresh, San Pedro was younger, and the Vincent Thomas Bridge didn’t exist yet. Now Dustin stands in the same building, surrounded by those same marble slabs, fabricated into tables for a restaurant that carries a name his family hasn’t used in nearly 40 years: The Majestic.

It’s early afternoon, a few hours before dinner service, and the dining room is empty except for the light coming through the tall windows that face the harbor. Dustin walks between tables, checking details—a table setting, the angle of a chair. He’s 41, fourth generation in a restaurant family that started in San Pedro in 1925, when Filippo Trani opened a pool hall a few blocks from here and served chili beans, beef stew, and wet beef sandwiches to men who’d just cashed their checks.

“The original Majestic was on Seventh Street,” Dustin says. “A dumpy little pool hall next to the check-cashing place. That’s what they started with.”

He pauses at one of the marble tables and runs his hand across the surface.

“These were in the steam room here. When they were renovating, the owner said, ‘What do we do with these?’ I said, ‘We’ll make them into tables.’”

Read the full article at San Pedro Today.