This past weekend, I flew down to Los Angeles to visit my dear friend Laurie. She lives in Brooklyn and I haven't seen her in about two years, so when she told me she'd be in LA for business I jumped at the chance to go see her.
We checked in late Friday night to the Farmer's Daughter hotel. After a late night dinner and survey of the strange scene at Canter's, we called it a night.
On Saturday we woke up early to visit the "Farmers Market" at the Grove, which was right across the street from the hotel. I put quotes around it because it wasn't the kind of farmers market I was expecting - it was more like an overgrown food court at a county fair (they had funnel cakes!), with a few stalls of produce of unknown origins that appeared to be there year-round. When I complained to an LA acquaintance about calling it a farmers market when it wasn't really one, he replied, defensively: "Well the Castro isn't really a Castro." Indeed.
After brunch at the hotel, we drove around a bit and went shopping. For no good reason at all, I got kind of excited when we passed by High Voltage Tattoo.
Uncle Jer's is one of Laurie's favorite stores. They sell tiny scooter shirts for the kids:
At Uncle Jer's I finally bought two sets of chopsticks, per the advice of my friend Case, who prefers to eat his salads with them.
One of the coolest stores we visited was Zanzabelle in Silverlake. They sell toys and food and clever, functional art like punk rock pillows:
And custom-crafted Ramones Pez dispensers:
And some amazing Kiss Pez dispensers:
Now, you'd think that the enterprising Gene Simmons would have made Official Kiss Pez dispensers aeons ago, but apparently all this time if you've really wanted Kiss Pez dispensers you've had to make your own. About a month ago, there was announcement that Kiss was finally releasing their own Pez candies, but the dispensers will only have album art on them, not the likenesses of the band. Considering the vast array of custom merchandise they've churned out over the decades, it seems like Kiss really missed an opportunity with creating their own Pez dispensers.
Or, maybe the Pez company is just afraid of rock n' roll?
All this information makes these custom Kiss dispensers at Zanzabelle even more attractive. I shoulda bought them.
Now that I look closely, Gene appears to be fashioned out of a Pebbles Flintstone dispenser, and Peter is secretly Lucy from Peanuts. My guess is that Paul and Ace and all the Ramones used to be Wonder Woman.
Sounds like a fun weekend project!