Down by Fourth

The other day, since I was already down by Angel's Flight, I cut through Grand Central Market--still all the grand sensory overload I remember it being, with that noodle stand that always put me in mind of that one we see Harrison Ford at in the beginning of *Bladerunner*, even though it doesn't really look so much like it. I'm not sure the goat meat taco place is still there, but how could it not be?

Having thought of *Bladerunner*, and being *right there*, I have to poke my head in at the Bradbury Building. Which everyone has seen, whether they know it or not. It was built by a fellow who supposedly did it with no great knowledge, inspired by a ouija board experience and Ralph Bellamy's book *Looking Backward*. It was completed in 1894 and I don't know who it was who described it as "a fairytale of mathematics." You've seen it in movies and fashion shoots and the like forever--that place that is all light and air and spare lovely ironwork and handsome wood. International Style may be looking as dated as mantuas, but the Bradbury Building is as fresh and lovely as ever. I can't for the life of me figure out why it isn't ringed by purring steampunks. Perhaps security lures them away with scones and clotted cream....

So of course by the time I come out of the Bradbury (don't you love that the delightful writer and the vintage modern building share a name?) I'm right there by the cut-through to Spring St, so I have to stop by the Biddy Mason wall.

If Los Angeles were an Orthodox Christian town, Biddy Mason would be the patron saint of the city. Biddy Mason (1810-1900) came to the area as a slave, trained as a midwife, and in the narrow window of legal opportunity, won freedom for herself and her family. She promptly settled down and saved enough money to buy a parcel of land where her memorial now stands. It served as a base of economic operations for herself and her family, and "urban homestead" as one writer put it. She delivered babies all over the city, in all walks of life. She set up an account at the store that used to be at 4th and Spring for flood victims to use. First A.M.E. was started in her home. She lived long enough to see her children and grandchildren be a credit to her, and respected and successful members of the community All in all, the sort of person who would be a superb patron saint, for any city let alone this one.

I have never been out of the country, so I don't know what it is like in places where the current culture has been in the same location for millennia, but this day I stood in the same general area where Biddy Mason had lived and walked, and I wondered about that. What had it been like then? What had it been like to be her, living through so much and constantly imagining good works to do? What was it like to watch the Bradbury go up practically next door, and taking far longer than planned to do so? I stood on the south corner of 4th and Spring and wondered which corner that store had been on where Biddy Mason kept the account for flood victims to use. I was standing where they had stood, on their way to the place where they could get food and clean clothes and household goods, because of the kindness of a woman born into chattel slavery in the opening years of the 19th century, who had walked halfway across the country behind a wagon, who had seized that brief moment around the Dred Scott case to free herself and her children and her sister and her sister's children. Who had been trained to a profession and was good at it, and used her earnings to help not only her own family but these flooded-out immigrants too.



Maybe part of what interests me is that there is comparatively little history on this spot, for the culture that is here now. Okay, Biddy Mason was born two hundred years ago next year, but she only died a little over a century ago. Historically speaking, that is the blink of an eye. When I was standing by her memorial wall, we were separated only by some time, and not at all by space. It would have been wonderful to have stood there and have read any writings of hers. (Are there any?)



After all this pondering and exaltation--(that building on the north side of Broadway still displaying a red and gold mural of the hands raised as though in blessing, showing over the tops of the buildings to the south, where I stood, having visions of this street and mixing my poetic references freely--)--I continue my meandering toward Metropolis Books, I swear not two blocks away from all this. A bookstore is full of voices dependant upon our eyes to be heard. I did not hear Biddy Mason in there, but I could have asked.



I don't really know why chronos time thins out so easily and kairos shines through when I am downtown, but it does for me, and I will keep going back.

I Saw Angel's Flight In Motion...

Having gone upstairs from the Pershing Square station by a different escalator, I saw the little railway car moving. I didn't know which car it was I saw, and I could not remember which car had crashed years back. At this moment that knowledge seemed important. The cars are called Sinai and Olivet, I could remember that easily enough.

So of course I scamper over with a cry of joyful surprise, seeing finally two cars moving--it is a funicular railway after all--and they stop in the middle of the tracks, side by side on the double-tracked part. I am suspecting the somewhat eccentric people sitting around in the sun are used to these outbursts by visitors. I run over to the gate, already planning the page in my journal where I would glue down my ticket stub from having finally, finally ridden Angel's Flight again. Would they still be selling the packet of five tickets? The cyclone fence still blocked the sturdy old orange and brown gate. The sign on it still gave no indication of when Angel's Flight would open again. A place to donate money toward it was listed. I did not care, my heart still rejoiced to see Angel's Flight in motion. I'll ride it again someday.

Years ago one of the cars crashed, I believe killing a passenger (the second fatality in all its history, which is a long one.) This was due, as I recall, to faulty maintenance and faulty inspection. But I could be remembering this incorrectly.

This little dab of rail helped people scale the short steep hill from Hill St to Olive, and was, I believe, the most heavily used piece of track in the world, due to its short length and long long history. It stands about half a block down from its original location, as I recall. I used to love riding it. As I recall it now, you could buy a slip of five tickets for a dollar, single rides 25 cents, and from gate to gate, I don't think the ride took more than five minutes, if even that long. The cars were all stairs and brass rails and windows, and wood that rattled--pleasantly then--as I sat and watched the centuries meet, the last century (?) meeting the current one. It was so much more enjoyable than an elevator.

Time, technology, Who-knows-what; I don't know what is holding up the reopening of Angel's Flight but I hope it opens soon.

This Is So Sad....

I'm reading one of Dashiell Hammett's short stories, a Continental Op one, set in 1923, and a phrase goes by me, and I think, "well that's a bit twee...."

I stopped then. Clearly my recent reading has relaxed my sensibilities badly. Alot of what is in the more recently written books may be more, "flashy," than Hammett, but his philosophical stance makes him always and forever the top of the Hard Boiled. And smart! Gawd he was smart!

So I figured it was time to drink coffee and brood.... This is a big world, with lots of stuff in it, and clearly I need to keep my sense of humor about me. Hammett, "twee?" That was some weird headspace to be in... Okay, now I'm kinda hoping the ghost of Lillian Helman shows up to haunt me. I'll admit that.

The Magicienne Was Right, and Treats Abound

So I stop by Metropolis Books yesterday, and the vintage travel stuff is not in yet. However, the window display is the current volumes of Femme Fatales Women Write Pulp--reprints of old pulps that had been written by women, I believe most of these had been made into movies back in the day. I picked up *In A Lonely Place.*

Now me, I have a soft spot in my heart for hard boiled detective fiction, suspiciously close to the same place the squeals come from when I spot the Thanksgiving issue of Martha Stewart's magazine. I don't want to think too hard about that.... Anyways--I had just finished one of Max Allan Collins' contributions to the Hard Case Crime series (I think that is what it is called) and had enjoyed it hugely. So this comes up in what follows.

So the nice lady who owns the place and I get chatting pleasantly, the way one does when one has learned how to socialize effectively in public. Now by this time she knows a little bit about what my tastes are, and because she pays attention, she points me to a Hard Case written by her friend, Christa Faust. It was possibly not what I would have picked up on my own, but I like and respect Metropolis Books Lady, so I try it out, even getting a signed copy.

Well! I trot down the street to, yes, the Nickel Diner, whereupon I start reading and nearly falling off my stool with glee. The kind people at the Nickel kept filling my coffee cup and feeding me and seemed to be completely comfortable with my being flamboyantly literate in public. Faust's *Money Shot* was boiled quite very hard. No, it wasn't what I would have picked up on my own. I am glad I did. I had the book read cover to cover before I made it home that night.

So this is the thing--the Magicienne was right--it takes a person to tell you what you don't know and might want to know. Commerce and capitalism work very well like this--when we are good to eachother and help eachother. Nice manners in public help too.

Walking around chatting with people. It will change the world. Looking at stuff is good too of course.

Technology and Dreams

So the last time we were at the Magic Castle, we ended up closing the place so thoroughly that the kindly host Kurt walked out with us. Part of why we were so late was that we were chatting with a fellow member, who was showing us one of the more modern methods for doing close up levitations.

It was lovely in its design and I was entirely delighted by the effect. Having looked into both Steinmeyer and Tarbell, I had what could be some sense of what the technological advances were, being shown before me. (I can be described with no greater accuracy possible than as a "sophomore" when it comes to my understanding of magic.) From The Levitation of Princess Karnak to the ring floating before me was a journey. Even what Tarbell says about smaller levitations was said without the benefits of modern technologies improvements upon the elements involved in making the trick happen.

This is a small example of how technology can work really well, but I want to point it out. Yes, everything is connected, and there may be implications for the environment and world economy that I am not aware of in the improved materials, but unlike some other advances, this one serves only to increase wonder and delight.

Freakshow Deluxe

Last week I got to see Freakshow Deluxe at the Magic Castle. They performed a number of classic effects, freak show and fakir sorts of things. I'm no judge, but I was under the impression that they were doing a good job of it.

The theme of everything they presented seemed to be doing something nasty and painful and not suffering any ill effect from doing so. Frankly, this put me off initially. Maybe because of there being no ill effect--understand me, I don't want damage I want transformation. Years ago I worked with troubled teens. They had a horrifying ability to endure, I fiercely wanted them to be able to *transform* their experience.

But as I thought about this act later, I can see how there can be some Shadowy, psychological cathartic theater in all this. For all my fussing about "transformation," I also can see the value in being able to just get up and walk away from some of the nastiness that presents itself to our lives. When overhearing folks going on about hooha they are "dealing with" in their lives, I sometimes have to really bite my lip to keep from jumping into a conversation about which I really know nothing and say--"why are you even paying this much attention to this garbage?! Walk away from it!" Sure "whatever" happens, and you walk away from it without a mark.

Oddly enough, I had to undergo some oral surgery this week. It was thoroughgoingly unpleasant, for me and for the staff. The poor surgeon stood there unhelpfully saying, " I don't know why it would hurt, I numbed you up... Your hyperventilating is making the anesthetic wear off faster...." So ready to lunge out of my own skin but having to endure a necessary procedure, I thought about the Freakshow. I'm coming out of all this with out any ill effects, I thought to myself.

More from the Recent Doctor

As I wrote previously, the new Doctor has for years been mentioning all manner of interesting things, and one of these was the Parthians. Ever heard of them? Maybe alittle if we paid close attention while studying the eastern edge of the Roman Empire but other wise, probably no. They had a huge long lasting and mighty empire to rival Rome's.

The Parthians disappeared for many of us not by *mis*-direction, but by our attention being fastened to the Roman Empire. But there the Parthian Empire was, "invisible" and shaping the eastern edge of The Glory That Was Rome. (Oddly enough, that is how a number of close up magic tricks work. Scale of the effect is all...)

So I'm left to wonder about what the Parthian Empire was like. (another item for the list of cool stuff to find out about) Human history alone, to leave natural history to one side for a moment, not to overwhelm the imagination, is TEEMING with times and places, circumstances and viewpoints. A literature somewhere between science fiction/fantasy and travel narrative could end up producing the most accurate record of human experience.

Years ago, when I was in college, a perfectly delightful professor emeritus told me about a rooftop ballroom that was atop a fancy department store that miraculously enough still existed in the downtown area. When he was a student at this same school, before WWII, it was the height of elegance to visit this place. The great big bands played there, and it was strung with lights, and it was high enough to be cool and free of bugs. When he was telling me this story, he was a kind witty palsied old man, a world expert in his specific field within English Literature, and I will always remember the way his face fell into repose as he said--"and when you were up there...you saw nothing above you but the starry sky..." It was something eternal, at least something that hadn't changed much over the decades that separated the young student from the old lion, and it lodged in my memory, that ballroom I could never see, beneath the summer stars.

After this, I had the opportunity to go downtown to the old department store. I discreetly made my way up to the very top floor and found the door to the roof. Something about violators being prosecuted was on a sign, but really, I didn't care. At the time, I felt like all would be well if I simply explained about the rooftop ballroom, and the professor's story. So I quietly shoved the door open, and peeked. It was mid afternoon of an early spring day, with clouds scudding across the sky. The roof was an expanse of gravel, level as I could see, with no suggestion of ever having been other wise. It seemed smaller than I imagined too, but isn't that always the case.

I thought of all of this again when the Parthians came up again in the defense. A similar impulse, a similar interest. A question, again, of *scale*. I like to imagine Parthians on that rooftop, the ghost of the former ballroom around them, and I like to imagine the Doctor chatting with them, getting to ask all the questions and draw out all the stories she wishes for. I will be at another table, chatting with that professor emeritus, now long dead, about matters closer chronologically but just as gone (or not) as the Empires. Maybe it would be Benny Goodman's band playing, and maybe we would all dance together eventually.

The Defense

I recently had the grand pleasure of attending a friend's oral defense of her doctoral dissertation. A defense is one of the meaningful rites of passage our culture currently holds, and it is a stirring thing to watch. She was very great. For over two hours, we listened to our friend discourse, gracefully, wittily, and with enormous and powerful intelligence, upon issues surrounding ancient texts with some of the world's experts on these issues. She covered herself in glory, the committee was as pleased with her as she and her friends could wish, and the whole day was bathed in rich golden light.

She and I have known each other for about 14 years, and she is probably the most natural academic I know. Nothing but nothing in those years could deflect her from this goal recently achieved. Part of the interest of sitting in at her defense was listening to her go on about topics that she has been chatting about for years, in this very high-power setting. There may be this and there may be that to be said about the academy, but when you are acquainted with doctoral students completely engrossed in their studies, it is difficult not to think that this is part of what makes us human--this wild passionate untrammelled curiosity, this craving for deep intellectual and imaginative play. Well maybe what makes our humanity worthwhile--plenty of creatures play--but to watch humans completely engaged in fierce questioning is to feel some of their light and heat spill over onto ourselves. An "unexamined life" can be very well worth living, but it shows a will most correct before heaven to engage as fully as we are able with this adventure of living on this planet, as the humans we are, and to consider any sort of transcendence available to us.

Candy is Classic

A shop in Claremont sells loose candies without being twee about it. Five saltwater taffies for 25 cents, stick candy for 20 cents a piece. So 65 cents will get me five taffies, in liquorice, cinnamon, and peppermint, and two sticks--one sassafras, one clove. All old-fashioned flavors I like; they have horehound, but I really don't care for it. The best part is the bag.

It is a little white paper sack, maybe what, eight inches tall, four wide? The candies rattle satisfactorily in it as I parade about the streets of Claremont swinging it just a bit. I may be gaining a little dignified grey at my temples, but the sheer pleasure of having a little sack of picked-out candies to walk around with is eternal.

One for the Los Angles City Notebook

So I'm on Vermont, in the part of the city called Los Feliz, just a touch north of that corner where Vermont, Hollywood and Prospect all come together, but before Kingswell. I'd come from a bit of nice chat with the fellow who operates Blue Rooster, the only independent art supply store I am familiar with at this point--
(-- so that is where I like to get any art supplies I need. Usually gluestick and Moleskines. I was exactly there back in February of 2007 when suddenly, and that is exactly the word I mean, I took to collaging. I bought my first gluestick from him, and a Moleskine sketchbook, and collected ephemera from up and down the street, then sat in Starbucks and made a mess and was very happy with the results. So I like the place.)
--and I look over and notice that the base of the tree in its rock-laden patch of dirt alongside the curb, is covered in artfully planted succulents, in all those dreamy hazy shades of green and grey and purple that they come in out here. So I stop, and look up and down the street, after admiring this patch. I do not see another similar one. This one is in front of a storefront painted a harmonious shape of purple, I think the shop was called "Purple Circle," so this all makes sense.

The whole thing was so unexpected and unlooked-for. A secret garden of an entirely different sort from Burnett's, but with good effects.

Brain Vacations

If you were raised on Tasha Tudor books, as my mother raised me, then you will scream with delight over this one--

www.timberlakecandies.com

The last source in the world (?) for real barley sugar candy, and--wait for it--CLEAR TOYS

Yup.  Really.

And for a website where Joseph Cornell would have ordered materials for his boxes. (well, you know, if he were still alive, and remotely inclined to use the Internet....)

www.mantofev.com

and just because it is fun,

www.monstercrochet.blogspot.com

Earbuds addendum

Okay, so maybe when I yank the earbuds out, I claim I did it because I needed help with a crossword....

Short Posts

One of the side effects of my health being what it is at present is that I cannot sit for very long at a keyboard.  This is part of why my posts are the size they are.  Even so, some of them have taken a few sessions to write.  Thus, nothing comes out quite how I would like or intend.  (No surprise there, as anyone who writes knows.)

I had hoped this would produce a haiku-like density, and exactitude of detail.  It hasn't.  It has, instead, produced fragments like what we remember of dreams, or the details of old stories rubbed bare.  It is funny how the connective tissue, the plot movements, dissolve over time, and the stark images and bluntest verbs survive.  No wonder opera plots are the way they are.

Earbuds

I am tempted to start yanking them out of young people's ears. Number one I'm tired of having to listen to the tinny version of whatever wretched dreck they're listening to and calling music these days. (Aw go ahead, insert the ironic comment of your choice.)

Number two--yes, of course, we ALL UNDERSTAND that being young is a HUGELY difficult undertaking, it is, but as counterintuitive as it may sound, stuffing one's ears with only what one chooses to hear, viewing only what one chooses to view on whatever gizmo one views it upon, does NOT actually help any of the difficulty, it ONLY MAKES IT WORSE. And the young person may miss exactly what unlikely bit of information is needed to really help. Cheerlessly demanding to be "entertained" 24/7 is a quick way to ruin.

Either number three or arguably two-A--Now howanhell does anyone expect to learn even the most rudimentary of social skills--I'm talking like the ones to not get yourself killed by cranky perimenopausal commuters like myself--without a modicum of practice? I will morosely prophesy that in some number of decades exactly these same young people will be sitting around all plugged in and desperately lonely beyond anything of my imagining, without even knowing what it is. They will fasten upon their flickering screens filled with words written by Moliere, or Jane Austen with sorrowful wonder that people could ever have been anything like that. These writers will be stranger than Phillip K. Dick.

Feh. Maybe I'll say "You'll thank me for this some day," as I yank.

Crosswords Make Us Sociable

People chat pleasantly with each other in public--total strangers--over crosswords.  This I have noticed.  It is very easy to feel like a human being when sitting at a counter, or on a train, and discoursing in a lively fashion over crossword clues.  Conversational pacing, sharing the talking-space, (I'll bet there is a term for that) all are easier when corralled by the limits of the puzzle.  And the topics tend to be engaging and pleasant!  The older I get and the more I see, the more grimly serious I grow about these matters of sociability and pleasure.  Job status and money don't matter--do you know who a "Burquh-wearer's God" is, or how to spell "yurt?" 

Eventually we are all going to be dead, and everyone and every thing we ever knew or loved will be swept away.  The amount of goodness we can leave behind in the world will be one of the few things that will matter.  By behaving well in public, having innocent fun with strangers over all the strange matters in this wide world, we can add our light to the sum of light, that will shine on generations to come. 

Airship Dream

Last Saturday the beloved and I were keeping our usual hours at The Press (a restaurant in Claremont. That's what people did before phones, "keep hours" in public places) when a fellow at the bar was telling us, that in west Texas, the little abandoned railroad towns are being revived by artists and other likely characters. Some place just big enough to have a post office will have three art galleries. Suddenly I was dazzled by the very idea of captaining an airship for commuter travel between them all. (And some freight too, sure.) The beloved brought up airship rides over the Grand Canyon. Yum!

Well what did I dream of Saturday night but of being an airship captain running a commuter line among little towns abandoned by the railroads! I don't think it was west Texas, it was too green. I had great fun in the dream, sipping coffee from a mug as I stood at the wheel, like an old sailing ship's wheel, like old airships had. The sun shown gently, the breeze was fresh. People moved back and forth between towns and we were all happy to see each other. I hope I dream of that again.

Imagination, and Steampunky implications...

A travel supplies catalog.  I won't say which one it was I looked at today, but, well, *really.*  It seemed to my eyes to be full of gear for the anxious and paranoid traveller.  Heaven's sake, if you *really* think you are that menaced by leaving home--then don't go!  Hire someone to go for you with all the money you would have spent on theft-proof luggage, bacteria-killing lamps, poop-deodorizers and wearable air filters and water-cleaners.  (But golly now, all, all of it IS *portable.*  I'll admit I'm a mild sucker for miniaturization.) 

What really put the cap on it all for me was when I found the special case to keep all your credit cards, that would block--I wasn't quite clear on this part--either high-tech super thieves from stealing information off your cards, or would keep a chip in your card from broadcasting, uhm, stuff.  I went all steampunky there for a moment and decided that the most fiendishly diabolical way to thwart today's super-thieves and their cutting edge naughtiness is to go as low-tech as possible.

At the Magic Castle this week I was fortunate enough to see a particularly solid ole' trouper who knows his business as a performing magician better than plenty of people.  His act was a complete pleasure, being a compendium of classic effects presented superbly.  I was wildly privileged to chat with some of the audience members after the show, and listen to their complete bafflement over what they had seen.

Now these were reasonable adults, not too drunk or anything of the like.  They had never seen most of what the magician presented, and spun out somewhat plausible, invariably high-tech ways for the tricks to have been done.  I nodded and listened and intuited that I really didn't need to instruct their imaginations/be a sanctimonious jerk about any of this.

I was intensely fascinated by it all.  I see often enough people unconsideredly assume a magician is presenting all-original material, and, they don't really consider that there may be certain principles at play that are the same since the disputed images were painted in Egyptian tombs.  For *me,* this makes it all the more magical.  This may not be the same for everyone.  What strange power and possibility lies in being able to function outside the ordinary bounds of some peoples' imaginations.  I'm not quite sure how to phrase that....

Taking Friends to the Magic Castle

So we were there Wednesday, with friends recently returned from the East Coast. This week's Featured performer was "Cashetta, Queen of Magic." Cashetta has her own show in Vegas called "Magic's a Drag." Now I am fascinated by how a person figures out that what they need to be doing is magic while in drag. She was splendidly theatrical, and quite a solid magician (magicienne?) and a great pleasure to watch. Her presentation as a woman added another...what? "interpretive layer?" to the act, and I enjoyed that. One of the pleasures of magic is the twists and turns and depths of the illusions.

Louise Brooks?

Yes, the famous silent movie actress. In one of my historic-core-induced fits, I wandered into the always-delightful-and-erudite Metropolis Books, and accidentally picked up a copy of *Lulu In Hollywood*, an arresting account of the actress's life, the author's acquaintance with her, and then a collection of some of her essays on Hollywood as she knew it. I had it read before I got home that day--reading on the trains, the waiting rooms, the Nickel Diner and later the nummy vegan diner Flore in Silverlake. Good Lord the woman could *write*!-- And of course her material can't help but interest. I commend this to your attention. Miss Brooks had a very different take on W.C. Fields, and on Humphrey Bogart, than one usually meets.

Sitting Quietly at Home

Last week, not feeling quite my best, but not out and out sick, I sat quietly at home for longer than I have in a long time. From waking to sleeping, I stayed put. Some reading was done--Francis Hogson Burnett exotica, *Square Meals,* where in I found a recipe for a fig-and-crystallized ginger spread for tea sandwiches that I think would be good to try. I'm not huge meat eater, but a pot roast sounded intriguing. As has been pointed out by L.A. writers of note, few dishes are quite as cravenly exotic as a nice pot roast out here. To be fair though-- there is very little call to eat pot roast in this mild and balmy climate. There are reasons why seal blubber is not craved in Miami, and Inuits live quite nicely thank you without an endless supply of mangoes. But as the false chill of the June Gloom sets in, I dream of the savourous warm brown smells of a roast.

I finished reading Verne's *Around the World in Eighty Days* too. The part where they sped across the prairie in a wind driven sledge was particularly exciting--I have a degree of familiarity with the area described. Sometimes I really miss Nebraska. It was a far more mystical and alluring spot than plenty of people might think. Willa Cather could not have come from anywhere else.

I start filling out the Moleskine City Book

So it finally crossed my mind that this would be a good time to start filling in the Los Angeles book the way I planned to do. I had started already, but I had very little in there. This week and last I started going over my old notes and journals of the past year in order to pull out and record my specific experiences of the City of Angels. Right now, I'm still pretty much just making elaborate lists--filling out locations of places, gathering the places to begin with, the like.

This has been fun. I ended up reviewing my journals of the last two years and discovering that I really have learned a few things. This is interesting too, to intentionally and systematically ( well a bit) record what I enjoy about where I live, and what I look forward to enjoying about it.

Finished *Tomorrow's Eve*

...and I don't quite know what to make of it. I imagine that students of Women's Studies and of literature will have fun with it. One could spend a lifetime pleasantly enough just researching any interesting question that crosses the mind. I don't quite know what to make of it at present, and so I just allow it to sit in its own strangeness in my imagination.

I just finished Dashiell Hammett's *The Glass Key,* being the last work of his I had not read. Gracious he was good! "Hammett's San Francisco" would be a fun Moleskine City Notebook to fill out.

American Clocks & Fountain Pen shop

Well how cool is this! The second hand came loose on my pocketwatch so I take in to American Clock in Claremont, where I always go, and the gentleman whose father started the business, fixes my watch handily. We get talking about things, and their repair, and somehow we get onto the environmental soundness of fountain pens, and I mention having FINALLY visited the mad fabulousness that is the Fountain Pen Shop in I think Monrovia. (Well if you like fountain pens.)

Well it turns out his business used to be right in the same building on the same floor as the Fountain Pen Shop! "On 5 th St, between Hill and Broadway." Go figure. I told him about my recent visits to the area. Someone else came in just then, so we could not continue the conversation, but I look forward to asking him about what it was like.

I've read an article about the history of the Fountain Pen Shop. It is less than one hundred years old, by a bit, and yet it was the FIRST shop of its sort in Los Angeles (it moved out to Monrovia in recent years.) I can hardly credit that a pen repair place did not exist in the city until well after the start of the 20th century.

This interests me too, how at one time these two businesses, both about items of "hand jewellery," were so close together. Both have survived, both are about items that have endured despite being largely displaced. This is something I am wondering about technology--the stuff we don't especially consider as we use it seems to be what is "of the moment" and the stuff we do think about and seek out may be more "vintage." There is some thing about intentionality here, consciousness. Questions we will have to ask more often--about what we use, how we use it, what is involved in our using it. Clothing styles, especially women's clothing styles, have changed to not consider the use of pocket watches, and modern papers don't take fountain pen ink so well as a rule. (The watch guy and I had spoken about a possible revival of pocketwatches, as carpal tunnel syndrome spreads. Some new ink makers are formulating inks to work on modern papers. I *believe* Noodler's has one that REALLY protects against identity theft.) Once an idea arises it hardly goes away completely.

Going to Cole's

So I went to Cole's, oddly enough just down Main St from the Nickel Diner, off of 6 th. I believe it is the oldest continually operating restaurant in Los Angeles. It used to take care of the railroad folk. It puts forth powerful arguments for being the originator of the French Dip. Phillipe's in Chinatown also does. I have not been to Phillipe's yet.

So I have the beef dip, and it's pretty good, and the apple pie and it's good too. I like a place that can endure, and give you good things to eat. The coffee I was not so crazy about. That struck me as strange I can *tell* you.

"walking around looking at stuff"

I get alittle giddy when I'm downtown. I mean Los Angeles, I mean what can be called "the historic core," as any city expert is quick to solemnly point out, "L.A. doesn't *have* a 'downtown.'" Mhm.

So anyways, I'm at Pershing Square, just come up from the Red Line, and I'm standing at 5 th and Hill, and I walk up 5 th, toward Broadway. Now as recently as the childhoods of late-middle aged Angelenos, Broadway was a great, grand, street full of all the department stores and theaters in the highest splendor the city achieved. Running parallel, one block over from Broadway, is Spring St. Back in the day, it was called "The Wall Street of the West," and M.F.K. Fisher has made mention of how plentiful and legendarily good its restaurants were.

Perhaps fortunately, this area has been benignly neglected. These great, huge fine buildings sit in the sun, advertisements for residential hotels fading upon their side offering rooms costing per week what you could now spend on a snazzy 20 oz. coffee beverage. Little human-sized businesses fill up all the spaces along the streets, producing a very amiable bustle. No, it is not remotely as elegant a crowd as it once was, but it is a good one. Singularly eccentric looking folks greet each other pleasantly and share cigarettes and discuss the Lakers and life feels good to me when I'm there. The endless amounts of old residential hotels seem to be divvied up between still being residence hotels albeit of a different sort than perhaps they were, and rehabbed lofts. I try to make out what is going on in the upper stories of some of them, that give evidence of the remains of balconies, and second-story ballrooms and the like. One building has a pair of big gargoyles sticking out from about the third floor and I don't know why. An ancient looking woman in a motorized wheelchair gazes off into space like the riddles of the Universe just might give themselves up this time. We make eye contact and greet each other pleasantly, as strangers do, and she goes back to studying.

A big empty corner retail space on Spring (I believe it was) has faded walls, high ceilings, and hexagonal tiles on the floor that bear wear-marks suggestive of the placement of counters. Big, engaging oil paintings are lined up leaning against one of the walls. Somehow, I do not think that this is a temporary gallery space, and that makes all of it more interesting. Everyone standing at the bus stop behind me is brightly reflected in the window glass. I am too, inexplicably dark and hunched, staring like some sinister figure. It's an odd way to see myself.

I've wondered before and I wonder again what it must have been, to live here, back in 1909, 1923, 1935. What was it like to live between two of the mightiest streets in the whole region?
I walk past two hardworn men counseling each other about recovery as I head into the Nickel Diner. The area may lack its former elegance, but clearly there is no lack of dignity on these streets.

If you haven't been, you should go to the Nickel Diner. (524 Main St.) The food is good, real, comparatively affordable, and the desserts CANNOT be beat. One of the owners was chatting with me about the old menu murals painted on the walls. Apparently when they pulled down the old panelling and the lowered acoustic tile ceiling, they discovered this evidence of a diner previously in this space back in the 30's or 40's. "Sometimes a place tells you what it wants to be," she said.

I saw potted geraniums of coral and purple all up the fire escapes-to the roof-of one old building as I walked back to the Metro station. Herodotus said something I don't remember about the changing fates of cities.