Just Kids

Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, 1969. Photo from HERE.

I've recently been reading the memoir "Just Kids" written by Patti Smith, '70s punk singer/songwriter. In 1967 she went to New York City, moved in with her friend, Robert Mapplethorpe, and they lived the life of poor artists. They moved from squats to house-sits and finally to the Chelsea Hotel, where they mingled with artists and musicians, and began to find success, she as a poet, playwright and singer, and he as a photographer.

She writes of sleeping in the streets, scavenging garbage for furniture or clothes, and going days with no food to eat but vending machine peanutbutter crackers. Her memoir brings back my own time in that city, walking those same streets, working in Lower East Side theatres. I was never as hungry as Smith, but I do remember walking blocks to save a 50 cent subway token, and there were times I couldn't make the rent on time.

The beauty of a barter economy

Our neighbor, Sean, is an expert mushroom forager, and we've benefited from his generosity before, when he showed us how to forage for chanterelles in an undisclosed Topanga location. But how to pay him back?

When I read Sean's blog post about a bumper crop of wild mushrooms he gathered in Northern California, I made what I hoped would be an offer he couldn't refuse - trade some wild mushrooms for an assortment of weird British snack food and candy. Irresistible!

Inspired invention - starting young

Take a few minutes to watch this video about a very creative little boy.

Caine Monroy is nine years old. He spent his summer vacation with his dad at his dad's auto parts store in East Los Angeles, and while there, he created his very own arcade of games, working with cardboard boxes and toys.

He didn't have many customers, but one day a filmmaker wandered into the shop and met Caine. He shared the news with his friends, and now Caine's Arcade is an inspiration to other inventive kids.

Caine's Arcade was installed as part of Unique LA, a consumer exhibit show featuring local artisans that takes place this weekend at the California Market Center in downtown Los Angeles.

I stopped by to see Caine's Arcade. I purchased a Fun Pass ($2 good for 500 plays) and played the basketball game. I'm not very good at it, but I made a basket eventually!

Here's Caine himself, concentrating on a camera while presiding over the enterprise.

The games are very intricate and challenging.

There were lots of customers playing Caine's games at his arcade.

What started as a game has turned into an effort to raise funding for Caine's future college tuition. The intial goal was $25,000, but now foundation has raised over $250,000 - and now the Caine's Arcade Foundation supports opportunities for other innovative kids.

What a great affirmation for a 9 year old boy's creative spirit!

UPDATE - We might not have learned about Caine's Arcade if someone hadn't noticed it, and nurtured it. Think about it - when have you seen a work of imagination and creativity? Have you helped it grow? How about the next time?

Los Angeles weekends

This weekend, we did the kinds of things that Los Angeles families do on weekends - we took care of our cars, and we ate.

The eating part is pretty normal for us, but the car part is unusual. We tend to neglect our cars, and they have become somewhat decrepit. Several months ago I took [The Man I Love]'s car into Pep Boys to have a burned out tail-light replaced, and the technician told me we needed new tires. I've been nagging [The Man I Love] ever since about driving on bald tires, and today it finally worked. We took his car to a full-service tire dealer and asked them to put on new tires, change the fluids and do a tune-up.

The shop's proprietor recommended a nearby Mexican restaurant where we could lunch while waiting for the work to be done.



They had pretty good margaritas. And they made the guacamole fresh at your table - I love that! Ply me with carnitas tacos and I'm a happy girl!

Like typical Angelenos, we had driven two cars to the auto shop, to avoid getting stranded if the car had to be left overnight. Luckily, the shop said it would be done in a couple of hours. So after our meal, we decided to take my car (aka, My Son's car) for a much-needed bath.

As I said above, we are deplorable people who neglect our cars. I am a little worried the authorities are going to tear up my "Los Angeles County Resident" card because I fail to wash my car at regulation intervals. It's bad enough that the oaks trees at home spread their day-glo green pollen and stringy little flowers on my car, but there also seems to be a very large bird roosting over my parking space at work, because there are spectacular splashes of white guano on the hood and windows.

Well, like a person who only attends church on Christmas and Easter, I washed my car in celebration of Spring.

Here it is, getting washed by the kind gentlemen at the Tarzana Car Wash.I moved to Los Angeles in my 40's, and I was a little taken aback at the importance Angelenos place on having a clean car. Maybe it's because I came here from Seattle, and who can keep a car clean where it rains all the time? At my first job in L.A., I was amazed my co-workers would take their lunch break to wash their cars! Then I learned how many great taquerias in L.A. are located on or near the premises of car washes - a perfect example of the symbiotic nature of the market economy.
The Tarzana Car Wash has a hot dog stand.

It takes time to get your car washed, so car washes provide entertaining diversions to keep you occupied while you wait.

The cashier's office at car washes have racks of greeting cards, car accessories, assortments of air fresheners, and - for some reason - rotating displays of reading glasses. These are so ubiquitously present at car washes that [The Man I Love] and I refer to cheap reading glasses as "car wash glasses." Some places have coin operated massage chairs that will quiver away beneath you for a quarter.

But, inevitably, you end up with everyone else, sitting on the bench under the awning, reading the real estate ads and waiting for the guy rubbing down your car to whistle and twirl his towel in the air, indicating that he's finished. I was embarrased by the dents and the broken tail light, but the attendant polished, wiped, and cleaned my car with as much tender loving care as he would with someone's Bentley.

And won't My Son be pleased to see his car so nice and clean when he comes home from college next month? But what will I drive then????

Empty nest

Like many, I'm the parent of a college student, and my home is now an empty nest.

I had dinner the other night with two other parents of college students, and we realized that we shared a phenomenon that may be peculiar to American parents, or at least, Los Angeles parents.

We are driving our childrens' cars.

Los Angeles families buy their children cars at 16. Typically, affordable safety is a priority when buying cars for our young people, so '90s vintage luxury cars, or Volvos are hot commodities. In the case of my family it's a 1999 Volkswagen Passat station wagon with a dinged front fender. My Son dinged the other front fender two weeks after getting his license. Another ding ocurred while contesting another Pali High student for the left turn lane on PCH - both families wanted to keep our insurance premiums low, so both kids' cars stay dinged.

Now our children are gone, we've become a 3-car family with only 2 drivers. And - paradoxically - because we shopped so carefully for good safe cars for the kids, it turns out those cars are in better shape and with less mileage than the cars we got our very own selves five years ago. With college tuition as high as it is, we're not budgeting for new cars soon. As the Parent Car odometer turns over 120,000 miles, or the tires go bald, or the check engine light stays on - and our children now live in rural Vermont dormatories or Greenwich Village apartments - the best car in the family fleet tends to be the kid's car.

We are driving our childrens' cars.

So I'm driving a dinged up '99 Volkswagen Passat. There's something funny with the electrical system, which means that the battery will drain if it isn't driven regularly - a fact I use to justify driving it every day. In the cargohold are an assortment of croquet mallets acquired by My Son while in high school, and a plastic gun that blows bubbles. Also a set of jumper cables with melted terminals from the time his friend swore he knew the right way to jump a dead battery. There's a bumper sticker on the back that promotes the movie "Snakes on a Plane". Shortly after I started driving it, I shattered the driver's side rear taillight, when I backed into a bollard while momentarily distracted.

At dinner, my friend shared with me the fact that she now drives her son's Volvo, without, however, the surfboard he used to carry on the roof rack. My other friend said even though she's still driving her own car, she can't find the time or the money to fix her broken taillight, with the pressures of paying her daughter's tuition to Vassar.

We no longer have time for the sleek limousines, the sporty roadsters, the powerful German engineering marvels that hug the curves of our Southern California Roads. Gone are the powerful SUVs that carried soccer teams and ballet classmates. Even our spouses are driving 2000 or 2001 model cars.

One is embarrassed when carrying out normal adult activities, like stopping at a restaurant with a valet. I've been known to circle the block for 20 minutes looking for street parking, just to avoid looking a valet in the eye when handing him the keys. My friend with the Volvo said the last time she parked with a valet, she pre-empted his sidelong glance with a self-righteous "We're in a drought right now, don't you know that?" to justify the dusty chartreuse oak-pollen that coated her car.

Recently, my spouse and I had to drive a local dignitary as our guest to an arts event. It was a serious dilemma - should we use his car, the two-seater convertible one of us bought during a midlife crisis at age 40? Or the Passat with its dents and filth?

Answer - we rented a Mercedes Class C for the day, and took our guest to the party. All went well, and I think she bought our deception.

Unfortunately, when we came home, our disorganized life soon had its revenge. The next morning, in the shuffle to get to work, we backed the Mercedes down our hilly dirt and gravel driveway. The Passat and the convertible, deficient as they may be, are front-wheel drive cars. We forgot that the C-Class Mercedes is a rear-wheel drive car.

It got stuck in the mud. How quickly our fine airs were brought down to earth.

Thank goodness for Triple A.