Nellie Bly

So I just finished reading *Around The World In Seventy-Two Days*, by investigative reporter Nellie Bly, in 1890. In case you don't know, she set off to see if Jules Verne's fictional account could not only be duplicated, but bettered. (She popped in to visit the Vernes at their home on her way through France. Jules Verne was utterly delighted by her feat.)

Again, this was an enchanting view into a time and place. I believe she was twenty-five when she set off, with a shocking lack of luggage, even to the minds of free-and-easy modern sorts as ourselves. Even more shocking in her day, she went off alone--meaning she had neither man nor gun with which to protect herself. "...I had such a strong belief in the world's greeting me as I greeted it, that I refused to arm myself. I knew if my conduct was proper I should always find men ready to protect me, let them be American, English, French, German, or anything else." (Wow, how many doctoral dissertations can you find in that statement? Go ahead--in the right crowd it is an evening's entertainment and conversation. Just make sure you have enough snackies and drinks.)

One hundred and twenty years ago, an educated and literate woman could innocently write "I somehow always connected Japan and its people with China and its people, believing the one no improvement on the other. I could not have made a greater mistake." She then proceeds to tell of how her experiences taught her that they were two very different cultures. Some of what she said made me blink, adoptive Angeleno as I am, but she belongs to her time and place as I do to mine, and no doubt back in the day, her stories were revealatory to plenty of Americans.

I had ordered this book at Metropolis Books, down in the historic core, a while back. I t came in and I went to pick it up shortly after the poor girl was found murdered. After finishing the volume, the irony was not lost on me, over the very different fates of these two young women.

The Jewellery District

It is down Broadway, I think maybe from 5th to 10th, I'm not quite sure. But I was down there, wandering as I do, inspired in part by a reprint of an old whitebordered "linen" postcard, showing a color view of Broadway, looking south from 8th Street. It looks different now, but not so much as one might think.

The stores on the street itself are usually small, and display great fistfuls of neck chains, of all descriptions, hanging against the shop windows. I stopped in one business little wider than my arm span to buy a silver watch chain for my pocket watch. The gentleman had more than a few, all mounted on yellowing slips of cardboard, printed in blue with descriptions of the item so fastened. Amidst the detritus of relentlessly forgettable factory-stamped bagatelles was a single cuff bracelet. Tarnished silver, almost long enough to serve as armour, and showing the subtle signs of age and having been crafted for purposes not involving Westerners. I asked about it, the gentleman was evasive, I let the matter drop.

That was the only interesting item I saw in the Jewellery District as I went up the street. I was alittle surprised at just how disappointed I was by what I saw. Everything I saw in the windows was utterly ordinary stuff. Really, really, ordinary factory product. One window after another. A few strands of ill-nacred-pearls did not help. Later I wondered if the whole area really is like that. I'm hoping that I just did not know something essential about the place. I'm not expecting it to live up to the stories people tell of visiting the Tuscon Gem Show, but I am wanting it to be more than this.

I had to skip stopping in at Clifton's Cafeteria to eavesdrop in order to catch my train home.

Hi, I'm Austen, and I'm a cityhuffer

'Just returned from Nebraska, where I reacquainted myself with Lincoln. Wonderful town. I wandered about the downtown area with Willa Cather short stories in my backpack and drank coffee and had exalted and delirious thoughts about it all. Yup, I love me a city, some bookstores, and coffee....

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.

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.

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.

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.