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Usuhari beer glasses are ubiquitous in Japan — loads of restaurants and bars carry the super-thin, super-light glasses. Bert Youn didn’t understand why. “The cups were everywhere,” he said. “It didn’t strike me as interesting at all — it’s a thin glass that’s super light, what’s so special about that?” Then he ordered a beer served in one.
“It was the smaller glass, and it was served on this heavy wooden coaster at a tiny bar, and it just clicked,” Youn said. “The size, shape, weight was all perfect — once I took a sip I basically said, ‘Holy shit, I need these.’”
Youn, the owner and proprietor of The Good Liver, a tightly-curated general store in the shadow of I-10 in Los Angeles, California’s Pico Gardens neighborhood, has a lot of stories like this one. “Everything we have in the store is about the context it’s used in — like those glasses. It’s products that you need to touch and use how they’re meant to be used to ‘get it,’” he said.
Youn started The Good Liver as an online venture in 2013 with the goal of bringing products like the Usuhari beer glasses to more people. Its wares are varied, made by independent craftspeople, centuries-old family businesses and the occasional familiar (and dominant) industry names (Lodge cast-iron skillets, for instance). But there are a few throughlines that run cut across the catalog, which, the more you look at it, begins to feel like the world’s coolest and most obsessive collection of travel souvenirs.
Youn, for his part, is a world traveler and says that’s how he’s discovered most of the products he now sells. He also readily admits to “getting kind of obsessive about finding the absolute best versions of things — teapots, mugs, lights, whatever… I literally spent months looking for a desk lamp,” he said. (He settled on a rare vintage Jieldé in glossy black, by the way).
