Friday, August 3, 2012

WALKING WITH PATINA


I happened to be walking early one morning this week in the streets around the Beverly Center, here in Los Angeles.  I wasn’t looking for the seamy underbelly, since it’s a fairly swank neighbourhood, and I’d have looked in vain, but I was looking for things with a bit of quirkiness or patina.


Quite a few people were leaving their houses and apartments, getting in their cars and going to work.  A young couple fell in step walking behind me, so I didn’t get the very best look at them, but I got a general impression of young, attractive, cleanish cut, and I could hear their conversation quite clearly.

HE: I can’t believe Bobby’s got a job already.  He’s only been in LA like a week.
SHE: He got four casting calls in his first three days!  He’d have got the J.C. Penney job if     he’d been able to ride a motorcycle. He looks like the kind of guy who could ride a  motorcycle.
HE: That’s the thing about Bobby.  He’s so straight, but casting directors always think he’s so gay.


As you may have read elsewhere in this blog I have an ongoing interest in what I call “feral furniture” – couches, chests of drawers, televisions, that have simply been dumped on the street.  Some, of course, look in better shape than others, but I have never seen such a stylish abandoned couch as the one I saw that morning in the environs of the Beverly Center.  It looked like this:


And I was thinking to myself, man, this must be a really classy neighborhood.  The people here throw away furniture that looks cooler and more elegant than any furniture I’ve ever owned.  And then half a block later I came across something else feral, an abandoned toilet tossed into the ivy at the curb, which suggested that some of the area’s inhabitants may be slightly less classy than others.


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