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I was walking past the Hotel Cecil on Main Street in downtown LA today. The Cecil is the story of that neighborhood in miniature. As gentrification sets in, buildings that owners could not give away a few years back are being converted into upscale lofts. The Cecil is doing it one floor at a time. The lower floors are moderate hotel rooms, about seventy dollars a night. The upper reaches are still a crack house. I have heard of people being thrown off the roof in drug deals gone wrong. Every morning I see cops hauling someone out of there, past an upscale crowd at the sidewalk cafe. A few doors down, a for rent sign hangs over the ghostly dust outline marking where a neon sign always was, until this past Christmas eve when Crabby Joe's closed its doors. One of the last true dive bars, its iconic sign sputtered in the opening credits of the Charles Bukowski film Barfly.
Today two retail spaces on the street level that have been unoccupied and hidden behind covered windows were open and bustling with activity. Crowds homeless looking people were walking around with identical ugly lamps, and faded faux impressionist style posters in busted plastic frames. Slick middle eastern guys were loading up vans with thickly built dressers with chipped veneer and decades of cigarette burns and coffee mug rings. As I passed I felt the security guy trying to make eye contact with me, so I nodded and said hi. "Hey man," he called out, "you need any furniture?" The last thing I need is furniture. In the months leading up to my move to LA, I went through the overwhelming process of purging thirty years' worth of clutter and renounced my hoarding habits. Now as luck would have it, I've got a house mate who excels at finding partial pieces of furniture and other things we don't need in the trash, and that influence keeps me focused on my newfound freedom in living minimally. Still, an unsolicited rummage in a dark crack house sounded too good to pass up. I entered the first storefront and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. A narrow path wound through the mountains of junk that reached the ceiling. And it was junk, all of it.
As soon as I could walk my father was taking me to junkyards to track down obscure hubcaps and hood ornaments. To this day I can name the year and model of practically any car by a vocabulary of tail fin shape, grill features or in some cases even engine sounds that is hard wired into my brain. There was also the whole procession of furniture and assorted art and antiques that was always passing through our house, everything from taxidermy to pinball machines. If it could be flipped for a little dough, at one time or another, we had it. As a result I have a preternatural instinct for sizing up a situation like this. I made a quick and careful assessment of the dressers with metal TV cradles still bolted to the top, the bad art that was not bad enough to be good, the broken 1980's lacquered furniture not ugly enough to be charming, not old enough to be antique. The Cecil had been using the vacant spaces for storage for years, and now the progress of the neighborhood had finally reached their doorstep. All the clutter had to go to make way for a new restaurant.
The first space was picked clean of anything worthwhile, but the security guy was a persistent pusher nonetheless, as if he would be stuck personally hauling the remainder to the dump. "Take anything you want. All free. Take everything. We gotta get it out of here." The second space looked just as bad as the first, dark and squalid. But as soon as I entered I knew something good was in there. I could smell it. I went in deeper and deeper until I reached the rear wall. When my eyes adjusted I saw two large forms buried behind mountains of junk. They were outdoor signs from a bar or restaurant, with old black and white photos of joyful Mexican girls. Broken neon tubing partially spelled out "Senoritas on Sunset" across the top of each one. They were a good find, but not good enough. I dug a little deeper, and hit the jackpot. Leaning against each sign was a massive brown glass ceiling lamp shaped like a dish suspended from burly chains. Around the rim was an bronze motif of alternating fleur de lis and a neoclassical bust of a woman with a colossus crown, like a sexy Statue of Liberty. The lamps were a matching pair, from the 1920's at the latest. Each was easily three feet in diameter.
One had a few panels of glass missing, so I hefted the better one. It nearly killed me. I figured if I got it down the street and into my truck I could come back for the other one. Then, hey, who knows, maybe the senoritas could come too if nobody beat me to them. I mentally compiled a list of a half dozen place I could sell the signs. The lamps I would keep forever, pass on to my children, even design an entire home around them. My self imposed vow to abstain from material posessions had met a fabulous exception. As I broke out into the daylight and commenced my struggle down Main street I got my first look at how exquisite they really were. Then I heard a voice behind me.
"Whoahwhoahwhoah! Not THAT!" The security guy was shaking his head, amused. Another, more important looking guy had joined him just then, who looked significantly less amused. He added, "We're keeping those. They're going up in the new restaurant."
I put the fixture back where I found it and left empty handed. After a while I found some consolation in the fact that even though they weren't coming home with me, those amazing old relics were not destined to go to waste. So if you ever find yourself eating an expensive dinner under a warm honey colored glow in Downtown LA, think of me.
Jaco, on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, is still a realtively sleepy town, although a recent boom in expats and tourists is turning it into a resort metropolis at an alarming rate. Massive condo tower projects loom over both ends of a single main drag. Anonymous side streets point matter of factly in two directions: to the beach, or back toward route 143 and the MaxiBodega, which is either owned by or modeled in great detail after an American WalMart. Throughout downtown, barefoot families piled onto dual sport Kawasakis weave through lines of shiny tour vans. Smooth new blacktop and the fresh concrete skeletons of new hotels stand in contrast to roaming packs of wild dogs, hopping on broken legs down gap-toothed sidewalks. After dark the Monkey Bar, an American owned dance club that caters to student backpackers, emerges as the rowdy hub of Jaco's prostitution and drug dealing industries.
The Australian island state of Tasmania is known for its isolated spaces and, as with many sparsely inhabited areas around the world, local lore tells of a mysterious beast that roams free in the wilderness. Unlike enigmatic creatures such as the Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster however, the Thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger, was in fact a known animal that lived in the area until it was hunted to extinction in the first half of the twentieth century.
The Hollywood of today bears little resembelance to that of three quarters of a century ago. To step into Fred and Ginger's footprints outside Mann's Chinese theatre one must step over Harry Potter's Converse sneaker prints. The magnificent set of the 1916 D.W. Griffith epic Intolerance has been recreated as a mall, the entrance to a Victoria's Secret guarded by giant elephant statues. And the stars on the shabby walk of fame now seem to be handed out to anyone. To appreciate the magnificent craftmanship that went into early cinema, it helps to understand another labor of love, this one in the field of archaeology.
About three hours north of Los Angeles, the town of Guadalupe, population 6,000, is proud of its long history as a cinematic stand in for the Arabian desert, and of its greatest treasure, the lost city of Cecil. B. Demille. In 1923 the silent film pioneer built a set of Pharoah's temple, guarded by an avenue of twenty four Sphinxes for his Technicolor epic the Ten Commandments. To prevent the common practice of low budget filmmakers scavenging set elements for their own productions, DeMille ordered the whole set dismantled and buried after production. Two Sphinxes were resurrected in the 1930's to watch over the entrance to the nearby Santa Maria country club, but were given no protective upgrades. They soon fell into disrepair and were retired to points unknown. Other than that, the city remained where it was. One million pounds of concrete and plaster, 75 miles of reinforcing cable, 500,000 feet of lumber, 25,000 nails were bulldozed under the dunes near Guadalupe, where it all still rests today. A set 120 feet tall and 720 feet wide, the work of 1500 laborers laid forgotten for sixty years until a Brooklyn film buff named Peter Brosnan, inspired by DeMille's posthumously published autobiography, tracked down the site. In 1983 he teamed up with archaeologist John Parker, and using ground penetrating radar equipment located a dozen sphinxes and much of the temple. In 1987 and 1989, the Nature Conservancy acquired large areas of the dunes and surrounding marshland as a wildlife habitat.
In 1998 "Friends of the Lost City" was founded to attract funding. So far less than $40,000 has been raised, and another $140,000 is needed. The group has had no luck getting Paramount, the studio for which DeMille created the epic, nor Hollywood in general, to contribute. So the project sits in limbo. Unless funding comes forward the set will eventually be lost to the ever changing landscape of the dunes.
Few people know more about the project than John Perry, whose passion for local history has gradually grown his auto parts store on Main street into a museum of all the cool things he loves. It's a fascinating walk through old Royal typewriters, movie set pieces, toy trains and classic car parts, each with a faded index card, proudly hand lettered. There are pictures of John in high school with his custom 1952 Chevy, and nearby the red roof light from the town's first police car, a truly impressive trophy for an authentic greaser with a hopped up Chevy. I eventually find him in the back helping a customer. When I inquire about the DeMille project, he shifts effortlessly from car buff to film buff.
There's one question I like to ask anyone who has spent a lot of time in one part of America, "Have you seen the place change much?" He's in his sixties, tall with olive skin and a warm smile. His store is as much a monument to his life as the Lost City is to DeMille's. I soon get the feeling that his story is every bit as interesting as the one that brought me to Guadalupe. As it turns out there may not have been a man and his building more synonymous, more inseperable, since the heyday of San Simeon. If I could have peeked inside John's head, into the blueprint of his thoughts and memories, it might have looked exactly like the shop he was now showing me around. The hard polished floor was left from the building's tenure as the town roller rink, where John rode his first set of wheels. One wall was taken up by a stately oak workings of a post office. It was moved down the street when the building was turned to a roller rink and subsequently widened, then rescued and returned by John when the newer Post Office came along. The whole thing was buried behind shelves of motor oils and history. Then, as if to illustrate the inexorability of Hollywood from Guadalupe, we're seamlessly back to film.
Resting horizontally over the postal clerk's window, camoflauged against the brown wood, was an unmarked piece I had not noticed. It was the shepherd's staff carried by Rudolf Valentino in The Shiek. The blacksmith of Guadalupe in those days was Italian, a boyhood friend of Valentino's and they would reunite for a joyful feast whenever Valentino was working in his faux-Arabian outpost.
While shooting Morocco in 1930, Marlena Dietrich left a much less favorable impression on the locals. She hated the sand so much that she insisted on being hauled from her Rolls Royce to the set on a sled. After shooting an assistant would wash her feet. Walter Matthau on the other hand, seemed to love the town as much as the town loved him. He sported around Guadalupe in his Lincoln towncar with his constant companion, a large black standard poodle. The debut of his Odd Couple 2 coincided with the opening of the newly restored cinema in town, so the cast cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony. "Then they stayed for about twenty minutes of the movie" John laughs.
In the bottom corner or a large display counter is the outstretched left front paw of a Sphinx, the thumb of its human hand resting halfway up the index knuckle like a sign language A, flashing an excellently sculpted thumbnail. This attention to detail distinguishes it instantly as an antique. These days of course the Sphinxes, the chariots, the crowds, the whole experience would be made on computers. There would be nothing to extract from the sand. The standard of Hollywood production is gradually moving toward these intangible practices, and as movies are made increasingly slicker, the results are often disposable. The impact of such golden age epics is very different than that delivered by modern films. The viewing experience is more participatory, more visceral, more intimate. Even DeMille's second approach to the Ten Commandments, the better known, Oscar winning 1956 version starring Charlton Heston, is in large part a faithful remake of the original.
John opens the case and hands me a piece that has come loose. It's brittle and practically weightless, white on surface, pink on the inside. Smaller pieces flake off and dust the glass countertop. I can see into the paw. "The sphinxes were hollow?" John nods. That's why they require so much care to uncover. "Hollywood should be paying for this. They make millions on a single film in a single weekend, and they can't spare $140,000?" His disappointment in the state of affairs turns quicky back to the thrill of showing me around, and I recognize the source of his youthful energy, a love for how and where one spends one's days.
I'm traveling with Julie, an emergency room nurse and natural healer from nearby Arroyo Grande. The sun is going down by the time we arrive at the dunes. It doesn't take long to find the site, which one account described as the size of two football fields. This is where Kiera Knightley and Johnny Depp dug for Carribean Pirate's treasure. It's where someone did something in Hidalgo, a movie nobody has ever seen. Uncovered by the recent storms, a patch of beach starts to yield bits of concrete with ancient rusted reinforcement curling out of it. Before long we see crumbs of the same white and pink material as John's sphinx paw. The plaster is so dry it draws all moisture from my hands on contact.
Looking directly inland, it doesn't take long to identify the mound reputed to hold the bulk of the Temple building proper, with its four 45 foot seated Pharoah sentries, massive relief charioteers and rearing horses. Then, very suddenly, I realize the genius of DeMille's vision. He found something very special here on California's Central Coast. Less than ten miles from John Perry's NAPA auto parts store, I'm deep in the Arabian desert of Old Testament times. The sunset paints the dunes pink for as far as I can see. The wind whirls and the sands shift to relcaim the exposed plaster shed by sleeping sphinxes, hiding them from sight until another day.
Nothing comes easy in the winter along New Hampshire's fifteen or so miles of rocky coastline. Living expenses are high, alcoholism is a wildly popular pastime, and there's not a lot of work. The cost of heating oil is a merciless bitch, and each year the newscasters give a body count of elderly people who died trying to stay warm in desperate ways. For a full third of each year you can count on your car being buried in snow, frozen beyond starting, or both. Sunlight drops down to a few hours a day, and the night takes on such a deep, inky blackness that each night you would swear the sun has gone out forever.
It's this bleakness that gives winter its rare and rugged beauty, and though they partake enthusiastically in their birthright of complaining about it, many New Englanders are proud to live in a place that is decidedly not for everyone. In the long dark season between tourists swarming in for some of the world's fionest foliage and carpetbaggers returning to summer homes, locals can take advantage of some spectacular natural diversions when they need them most. All of these factors contribute to an unlikely appreciation among surfers for New Hampshire's otherwise small and sloppy conditions that peak only when the weather sucks.
It was a plan we had cooked up somewhere around Halloween, when there was still time to lose interest, or conveniently forget. Instead the idea of we two non-surfers surfing the north Atlantic on New Year's day became more exciting as the time approached.
The search for equipment became a project in itself. I managed to borrow a complete winter wetsuit from a single source, so everything more or less went together the way it was supposed to. At four eleven and change, Lindsay presented somewhat more of a challenge. We managed to scare up a full-length summer weight wetsuit, over which was layered a shorty, that is, a wetsuit that covers the torso to the elbows and knees. Between these she wore a hood designed for scuba diving, which went down over the shoulders and under the armpits. We had found it at a yard sale. There was an odd assortment of boots and gloves, the old rubber cracked here and there from decades of storage in garages and basements but sturdy enough for the occasion.
We didn’t check the weather that day, as the locals often don't since the forecast is consistently bad and life must go on regardless. But if we had, we would have seen the simple phrase “wintry mix”, a cocktail of horrors including but not limited to ice, snow and overturned cars. And so it was that we found ourselves fishtailing into the parking lot of Jenness beach in a giant Buick station wagon faced with the worst the season had to offer.
After a few hail stung minutes of standing outside the car squeezing our exposed skin into the gear I felt like something helpful and encouraging needed to be said. All that seemed to fit was, “Okay. Don’t die.” A bit obvious, but it seemed like a good rule of thumb for an occasion we were at once so eager and so ridiculously unprepared for. Lindsay just shrugged. "Okay. You either."
The tide was low and coming in, a long enough walk to put the warmth of the car, as well any hope of rescue, worlds away. The day was composed of smudges in a wide range of grays, the difference in the black gray of the sea, the white gray of the sky, the chalky gray of the retaining wall tuned so finely that the landscape vibrated with a life all its own. Then the first ripple came out over our boots.
It was not exactly a prayer I said to the sea, but I felt a primordial impulse to radiate respect in the direction of something great, something that was clearly about to tumble me around like a giant slush puppy machine. The sound of Lindsay's board being dropped matter of factly onto the water made a Zen slap that pulled me back into the moment, and then we were fighting our way through the choppy breakers.
We spent a few aggressive minutes chasing waves, digging our arms into the blackness and pushing as hard as we could, eyelashes caked in salt. Before long I started to feel I was missing the point. I made my way back to the beach and laid my board on the frozen sand. Lindsay eventually did the same, and instead we just floated blissfully as the hard pellets of wintry mix blazed down on us.
I felt the rush of being wildly, madly alive that only doing something potentially dangerous can provide. The water was noticeably warmer than the air, and cocooned me like a thick blanket, and I rocked dreamily as Lindsay sported around some distance away. After a half hour or so, I looked up at the smudge of sea wall, and the smudge of shuttered Dunes motel sleeping like only a summer place in winter can.
We had drifted a good deal north, but it was no matter as we could still reach the shore. So we walked back along the beach comfortable in our makeshift armor, and satisfied with the experience.
We didn't catch the perfect wave. Technically we didn't even surf. It didn't matter. The real goal was to start off the year with a memorable adventure, to do something special on a day that society sets aside for nursing hangovers. And if it hadn't been a holiday we could have created one then and there using only what we had. It would be observed by getting just far enough away from familiar territority to be humbled by the power of nature. Because humans are small and life is short, and any day is a good day to try something new.
Schwinn ID numbers were located on the left rear fork until mid 1970. Then the numbers were moved to the right side of the Schwinn badge on the head tube. Before 1965 there was one letter for the month and the first digit was the year. After 1965 there were two letters. The first was the month and the second was the year. Like so:
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