After a week of schlepping boxes in and out of dusty storage rooms then moving furniture under the 114 degree sun, we are finally open for business at:
Victoria’s Attic
The Atrium
69930 Highway 111
Rancho Mirage, CA.
Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell anyone with a bank balance in the black.
Just look for Dealer 111 on the 111.
(Click any photo for slide show.)
The green green glass of home.
Memories in the making for some lucky collector.
Ducks egg blue, reptile velvet. How PETA friendly is that?
The purple low rider smoking bench b/w the tigerwood tansu.
“Art is my weakness.” Richard Nixon, c. 1971
The South African jewel that eluded the House of Windsor. My lizard Jo-burg vase flanked by Jackie, a Zsolany poodle, and Miss America 1951.
The moderne monolith on Union Square. When it was I. Magnin it had some of the haughtiest clerks in town. But the white marble facade was always gleaming. And there were no plywood windows. Now that it’s Macy’s it’s yellowed, dirty and full of tourists.One lunch hour at Williams Sonoma we came back to my apartment and got stoned. On the walk back I seemed to notice every bit of mortar dust along the way. And for the first time these puppies at 700 Mason.The impressive derelict building at the corner of Turk and Fillmore. I have no idea what it was but it looks like something out of the Burning of Atlanta.Age appropriate tagging across from the elementary school.I’ll miss walking on Galilee. Not everyone can do it.
Les Nuits de Paris Massage Parlor has been in the neighborhood since I moved here. The Minerva, Venus and Austrian shades in the window haven’t budged an inch in four decades.The parlor is a half block from the prestigious Commonwealth Club. My theory is there’s an underground tunnel to preserve the anonymity of its esteemed members.The Campus Theatre on the 200 block of Jones was famous for its male strippers. This bakery was directly across the street.My first bank account was with Hibernia at the base of Jones Street. I chose it for its beaux art architecture. It closed three years later. It’s sat empty except for a brief stint as a precinct station. They’re always working on it but it never reopens.The imposing and very un-San Francisco looking National Guard Armory was a block from my first apartment with Daryl on 14th Street. It became a porn studio in the 90’s. Thank you for your service.In the 70’s the first thing you did when you moved here was apply for $82 monthly General Assistance, It was a rubber stamp process, no one was denied. You also got $40 in food stamps. And Medi-Cal which meant free visits every month to a pill doctor for 30 seconals and 60 valium (which you could sell if there were any left.)The more hardcore graduated from GA to SSI. Applications were taken at 1235 Mission then you were called back for a psychological evaluation. The trick was to act as crazy as possible. I submitted the application but never went back.
Finally, an exit strategy evolves. My attorney has negotiated a settlement with the landlord. It involves money and I get to stay in the apartment until the end of the year.
Like so many other things in this process I’m not free to discuss all the details. Which has diluted my original vision for this blog. I thought there would be all kinds of Perry Mason histrionics to report on. Then it would culminate with me in the witness stand, pointing my finger and yelling “you lying bitch!” I even died my hair platinum in solidarity with Lana Turner.
In reality, the things I could have written about were pretty boring. Ellis Act evictions are procedural matters, the courts never came close to trying the facts of my desperate but heartrending story. Instead attorneys argued over whether the 15 days started tolling on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. Or whether I should have been served a copy of a notice that had been served to my neighbor. Who wants to read those dry arguments when there are tales of assassination drag to tell.
If I had prevailed in any of those procedural matters my Ellis Eviction would have been invalidated and the landlord would need to start over at square one. Which means I would have been given another year’s notice. At that point he could have dropped the whole thing or might have been motivated to pursue a more generous buy-out option. The former seems highly unlikely although it was the result I hoped for. I wanted to stay in San Francisco. Realistic goals are not my forte.
Since I can no longer afford to live in the City I’ve set my sights on Southern California. I’ve spent a lot of time there and I do enjoy it. My biggest fear is the adjustment it will take from the urban anonymity I love to the suburban nosy neighbor-ness I loathe. I hope I’m wrong about that.
Most of my childhood was spent in Indiana but for five years my family lived in the San Fernando Valley. I started kindergarten in Reseda and it was there I would later learn to read the local newspaper. In my case, the LA Times. I focused mainly on the comics. And pictures of Debbie Reynolds getting off the plane still wearing Eddie’s ring. Maybe that evil Liz didn’t break up their marriage after all.
But nothing topped the imagery of the Cheryl Crane murder trial. The depth of my understanding was limited to the photos but I was convinced Cheryl was just a poor girl trying to protect her mother. And the picture of a distraught Lana showing up at court made an indelible impression on my 8-year-old mind.
To honor the solemnity of the occasion Miss Turner dressed down in a simple black sheath and pearls. She topped it off, however, with the shortest, whitest platinum hair I’d ever seen. And sunglasses so black they looked opaque. Being a star, I’m sure she would have been happy to have worn opaque ones if it produced the right effect.
What that woman wouldn’t do in the pursuit of justice…
Come as you are. Lana was caught unawares and didn’t have time to prepare for her day in court.
A week ago I was waiting for a friend to pick me up and my landline rang. No one ever calls me on that phone, it’s almost always robo-calls or marketers. I’ve kept it because it was tied to the front door entry system. Since that no longer works I probably should get rid of it.
I answered it that evening because the caller id was a cell number. A man asked for me, I asked who was calling. He gave a name that was common enough to have been a made-up marketer but it was also one of someone I’d known in the 70’s. That’s who it turned it out to be.
We had completely fallen out of touch and none of our mutual friends seemed to know anything about him. It turns out he’s lived in New York the last 35 years and worked in the publishing business. He told me he was surprised my number still worked and that my voice sounded the same. I assured him that nothing else had changed either.
He said he still enjoyed his copies of White Arms Magazine and googled the title recently. His search led him to my blog which he was reading.
We talked about people we knew in common and I got him caught up on any news I had. Many of them had died which he knew nothing about. When I asked if he remembered Jim who I collaborated with on the magazine he said, “oh yeah, he died in an automobile accident didn’t he?” I laughed.
In one of the White Arms issues Jim decided he wanted a more affected, pretentious nom de plume. So he wrote that Jim had died in a car crash and that Rene White would be taking over as editor.
At the time some of my more political friends thought the term “White Arms” could be construed as pretext for something racial. But Jim said the name came from the sheaths of blank paper that made up the magazine. And how they would circle the world in an unpredictable way.
When we were putting it together I was always questioning what we were doing, wondering what the benefit would be. Jim told me not to worry about results, to concentrate on being creative and doing things. The consequences would take care of themselves.
Jim would have been thrilled that his car crash story had legs. And that White Arms still has reach.
