Thursday, December 11, 2008

Los Angeles Love


This was in a store window on Melrose Ave. today.

Everything was not on sale for love, but for desperation. M. and I took today (the day after my last lecture of the semester) and decided to treat ourselves. We went to Canter's for lunch and then took a walk up and down Melrose Ave. Every store had super sales. The kind you'd see after the holidays. And many of them weren't there anymore. Stores that I had seen for years and years were boarded up and gone. It was sad. One store we had kind of planned the trip around wasn't there. Combined with the low traffic on a Thursday afternoon, it made for a depressing experience. We didn't even really want to buy anything.

How best to cap that off? Well a trip to Necromance, which is still there (thankfully). It's the gothiest shop on Melrose. And not like Hot Topic goth, but real blood drinking, head shrinking, coffin owning goth. And I think that it is still there is saying something. Not only is it still there, but there are two now, which is proof that it is, in fact, in league with the devil.


The older store was filled with more "natural history" type of things, like animal skulls, taxidermy, and butterflies pinned to cushions in box frames. It had new swirly Victorian carpet and light blue walls. Very much an upgrade on the dusty hovel thing they had going years ago.

The new store a few storefronts down held all of their gothy freaky paraphenalia. Skull things, conjoined twin things (I was in heaven over this glass), 19th century side show books, 19th century metal speculums (speculi?) which intrigued me greatly, and a few really nice cards that I absolutely had to have. I almost bought the 2009 Mutter Museum calendar, but I decided it would probably be cheaper online. It is. I will have to get it soon. But by far the most ridiculous product was the roll of black toilet paper. You could also buy red toilet paper. This, to me, was heinous. I mean, if you are going to all the trouble of pretending you are undead or whatever, why acknowledge you do anything at all in the bathroom besides floss your fangs?

Canter's was the high point of the day. We both ordered sandwiches, and they are so huge that they served as lunch and dinner.


I got the Brooklyn Avenue, which is smoked turkey on rye with cole slaw. It was heavenly.


M. asked me out on our first couple of dates, but I asked him out on the third (if I remember correctly). He had never been to Canter's and I felt it was a total rite of passage, so we had dinner at Canter's and then went to the Improv for comedy. He was impressed. He might not have known it consciously then, but that was probably when he fell in love with me, because it is a totally great date idea!

We knew we couldn't pass up the bakery on the way out. I got a black and white cookie, some powdered sugar cookies, the mini chocolate chip cookes, and M. chose a few too.


On our ride down Fairfax, we passed my favorite little piece of LA history, the naughty cake store that is right next to a "classy" regular cake store. Apparently these two stores are in some kind of feud. The owners have been known to come to fisticuffs! If you are a classy cake shop, I'm sure it just yanks your chain to have the dirty store move in next door. They even have a window display!

You can get a cake that is just boobies with a red bra on them.


Even on weak legs, I love you Los Angeles.

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