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.