DRAFTBOOK

     Ever since I’ve been driving regularly to my girlfriend Ashley’s charming apartment in Redondo Beach, I have been passing a little house facing the Pacific Coast Highway with a sign in bold black letters, all caps, shouting Mojo’s Coffee and Pies. Ashley has been living in Redondo Beach for five months now. Consequently, I’ve got stacks of mental notes urging me to stop by and have some of Mojo’s mythical pie. I was also rather curious to find out who Mojo was; with a name like that, one can’t help dreaming up possibilities. And so, recently, Ashley and I were considering plans for the next day and settled on Mojo’s in the morning.

     On the drive there, I can’t say I wasn’t excited – what if Mojo turned out to be a pie-baking pirate, or a dwarf! And how I longed for a delicious pie to make my morning whole. We parked and walked the block to Mojo’s exchanging goofy grins the whole way. We mounted the wooden stairs, burst inside, and froze.

     In front of us was no counter, no scrumptious pie, but a lady dressed in business casual sitting behind a desk. Surrounding her, and the whole room, were boxes of stones. I stood dumbfounded for a moment, but it wasn’t sinking in.

     “Where are the pies?” I blurted out.

     “Oh,” she said with a practiced smile, “they went out of business…”

     “But the sign!?” I countered.

     “We just haven’t taken it down yet.” She said.

     “Oh.” I sighed.

     “Sorry,” she said.

     As Ashley and I walked back to the car, I wondered about whether the two groups, the pie people and the rock people, would get along since they’d be running into each other often. An even greater mystery, however, was how the rock people would find this place, what with there being nary a “rocks sold here” sign in the vicinity. My conclusion was that they were probably advertising through word-of-mouth – landscapers have a tight-knit community, I hear. Ashley countered that she thought something fishy was going on – criminals, after all, have a tight-knit community, too.

     Later I thought about the incident through a holiday-time lens and it disconcerted me; had I really been so bad this year that instead of pie, Santa left me rocks? Then I became philosophical, things change, I mused, it’s natural, just look at the neighborhood where I grew up: the old Russian stores are being replaced by trendy boutiques and restaurants with one-word names. If the Russian grandmas didn’t know before that West Hollywood’s nickname is “The Creative City,” they know now. A year or two ago, during an evening stroll through the neighborhood I was giving my friend Jaime an impromptu tour of what used to be and what is now. In the midst of our walk, I had to pause to admire the Tomcat theater. That movie-house and it’s raunchy marquees had been around since I was a wee-tot and yet I’d never seen anybody enter the place. Of course, I thought, the type of clientèle that enjoy the Tomcat likely prefer the back door.

     Cities do change – even South Pasadena is in the midst of tearing down the former pharmacy building across the street from the malt shop – but is it true when cynics declare that people don’t? It’s a complex question to take on, but I know one thing: I’ve been waking up close to six in the morning for the past few weeks and I think it has changed me; whereas before my personality remained constant till two/three in the morning, now I become a totally different person around 11:30 or 12. Yet, that’s an individual case – from a conceptual standpoint, it’s inviting to draw parallels between the change in architecture and humanity as a whole though I suspect its a fallacy; the thought is grand, and yet many would merely find it offensive if it was decided that the shape of our society was expressed by the Walt Disney Concert Hall, even after being told that the acoustics are great.

     It would be nice if that’s what it was all about: what’s inside. I was talking with a friend once and was informed that the reason I never get bored waiting in lines is because I have great internal architecture. I’ve pondered that many times since then – mostly when waiting in line – and haven’t reached any defensible conclusion. I’m fond of some modern architecture, but I’m not sure my insides are as smooth as Lautner or ravishing as Gehry. I like turn-of-the-century craftsmen styles of Greene & Greene, and find a certain pleasure in art deco but my lines just aren’t that long or upstanding. I suppose I do find something of myself in mid-to-late-19th-century American style of Frank Sullivan, but Sullivan didn’t put on airs, I do. We can go back and back, but I’m not baroque, not its opposite (an igloo), not a tent, not a Neanderthals cave, not even a tree that offers shade to a stranded man on a desert island (that guy better have great internal architecture, methinks). If everyone was like me then I could tell you positively that people change like cities do because what real city, while it’s still alive says, “that’s it, I’m done”? Everything is ongoing and never finished; designs change, materials change, minds change but existence continues; maybe not every individual person or building is infinite, but the fact of people and buildings, that’ll keep on, I hope.

     Back in my internal city, I’ve decided to construct a building. It’s a house facing the street with a sign that has big black letters, all caps, and inside there’s one room. In that room sits a lady, she’s surrounded by stones kind of like Mojo’s only near her desk is a trap door which leads to a basement. In that basement, there’s a bell choir serenading a pirate and a dwarf who serve never-ending pies to landscapers, dessert-lovers, poets, architects, communists, the Japanese, glass-blowers, surfers, door-jamb installers, Zamboni drivers, accountants, candle-stick makers, me and you.

Note: Since I wrote this, the rock shop replaced Mojo’s sign with one that says Exotic Pebbles. Oh boy.

I delivered a slightly modified version of this essay as a speech to my Toastmasters Club on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009.

     What took seven-and-a-half hours to extinguish with the aid of three-hundred fire fighters, eight rescue ambulances, and three helicopters? I am talking, of course, about the greatest structural fire in Los Angeles history, the 1986 Central Library Fire.

     It started innocently enough when a fire alarm was triggered at 10:52am on a bright Tuesday morning. Joyce Elliot who worked at one of the branches far away from the Central Library remembers getting a call on the morning of her return from a four-week vacation. “I felt as if I had been hit in the stomach,” she recalls, “I kept saying over and over in my mind, ‘Please, God, let everyone get out!” Over at the Central Library, employees and patrons were quickly shuffling out of the building muttering about those darned fire drills. To be sure, it was a well-known fact that the building, which was designed in 1926 by Bertram Goodhue, was a firetrap, and yet the staff had grown accustomed to the risk their workplace posed to the upwards of a million volumes housed there. It was not until firefighters rushed into the building and began breaking windows and hooking up hoses that everyone realized this was no drill.

     Soon, billows of smoke were visible from the outside where staff stood dumbfounded. “…as the day wore on the reports grew ever more terrible to hear. The firefighters were challenged by molten steel, narrow and unknown corridors and stairways, and in great abundance was fire’s favorite fuel,” Roy Stone, then of the Cypress Park branch, reported afterwards. Indeed, by noon the fire was still spreading, so much so that firefighters had to be “…rotated every 15 to 20 minutes due to the heat and smoke they were experiencing…Whenever a fire attack team open[ed] a nozzle, they [were] driven back by super heated steam.”

     The biggest problem was ventilation; since there was no way for the heat created by the fire deep inside the building to escape, the building was turning into a giant furnace. At two o’clock, temperatures inside parts of the building were estimated to be between 2000 and 2500 degrees Fahrenheit – that was when stacks began to collapse. As more and more water was poured into the building, a new issue arose: preservation of materials; water was rising inside the building, especially on the lower levels, so while the firefighters above were pumping in heavy streams, others were attempting to “de-water” the bottom floors.

     At three o’clock, after five hours of burning, the fire was no longer spreading, but getting to its seat was proving impossible; the heat that had been retained by the walls and the layout of the building made it so that every time firefighters approached with water, they were flung back by deadly steam. But a new scheme was about to get underway because for the past half-hour, Heavy Utility 27 led by Chief Lucarelli had been preparing to jackhammer holes in the floors above the fire. As each hole was opened, “…large volumes of heat and smoke [were] released under pressure…blowers [were] used for cross ventilation to help keep smoke and heat away from jackhammer crews.” Slowly, with each new hole, the firefighters below made headway in fighting the blaze. At five-thirty, the fire was 90% contained. An hour later, the firefighters were victorious. Yet, things were far from over, there remained the mammoth task of rescuing the libraries’ collection; what wasn’t ravaged by flames was soaked by the unavoidable water that was almost knee-deep in some parts of the library.

     That evening, when experts deemed the building safe to enter, firefighters took groups of staff members into the injured building with flashlights to ascertain the extent of the damage and plan the salvage operation. What they found was worse than expected; quick and decisive action would have to be taken in order to save the collection from disintegrating. Though every minute was crucial, experts spent a large part of the next day making sure the building was safe for what was to follow. Wednesday night, twenty four hours after the fire was put down, the call to action went out through word-of-mouth and media: “Please come…The library must be saved!”

     Many today doubt the necessity of public libraries in our society, and this was probably also the case in 1986, and yet thousands of people heard the libraries’ call and came running. It became known as the hard-hat brigade and its mission was to retrieve the books from the library, pack and load them onto trucks to be taken to donated warehouse space where they would undergo a restoration process. Thousands of people, young and old, from all over California signed-in, were given hard hats, and boldly entered the building again and again emerging loaded down with piles of wet books.

     For four days and four nights, there were lines of staff members, community groups, and other library lovers hauling books out of the library. Restaurants donated food, non-profits and other City Departments pitched tents and laid out beds for exhausted volunteers. The effort was herculean but the job was done and by Sunday, 70% of the libraries’ collection – everything that could be saved – was saved.

     All that was left after the flurry of activity was a crippled building, floating ash, mold, knee-high debris, and Central Library staff like mice returning to their poor holes. Glen Creason, a librarian at Central library describes his experience a few weeks after the fire: “Now as I am climbing through empty stacks where the wisdom of ages once rested, I can hear the music of transistor radios keeping the workers company as they inventory the losses. Can they be as sad as I am? We all lost a lot in those damned flames and it still hurts, a heartache that won’t go away.” Soon, even the melancholy sound of radios in the stacks were silenced as staff were moved to the temporary – for the next several years – Central Library location or reassigned to branches.

     While that ends the story of the Central Library Fire, Los Angeles could not stand still at the loss of its beloved library. It was Mayor Bradley and a cadre of community members along with the administration of the Los Angeles Public Library that organized a nationwide “Save the Books” campaign that ultimately resulted in the construction of a new Central Library – a beautiful building that combines Bertram Goodhue’s timeless design with an awesome expansion appropriately called the Bradley Wing. The new library opened in 1993, and remains as beautiful today as it was when it opened 16 years ago. While the fire was certainly a tragedy, from it rose a better place – for that we can be grateful.

Sources:

Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Archive: Report on Fire Suppression

Central Library Issue. LG Communicator. Volume 19, Nos. 3-6, March-June 1986.

Also, check out this catalog of gifts from the “Save the Books” campaign I found in the excellent California Index of the Los Angeles Public Library.

     There are places in the world where all men are equal. The public toilet, for example, barring the golden pots of the wealthy is one of those places, another is this diner. Opening with the sun, this diner can be compared to an old bar – a morning bar. The bartender of the diner in question is not wizened or wise-cracking like the tapsters of taverns too ancient or exclusive for their own good. He is unassuming; hair slicked back without the greasy sheen, a low voice that doesn’t offer advice unless asked – and he is never asked, because after a trounce in dreams, a crawl through actual pubs, a long haul across state lines, or just a saunter from a cardboard bed around the corner, you don’t need advice, you need bacon and eggs, and the smell of hot coffee in a styrofoam cup. Yes, there’s no chatter between the barkeep and his guests, but there is an invisible string tying them all together to this diner and the neat man in white who is their pastor preaching an unspoken silent sermon every morning; filling each man in the place with the word of the world beyond; everyday at the arrival of his flock they are baptized with coffee, and get their sacrament in the form of eggs over easy.

     Here we see two of the flock approach the bar. They’re sloppy with their lob-sided skullcaps, dirty sneakers, and torn undershirts peeking like neighbors from under their oversized sweaters. And yet they squeak when they walk like kittens and their eyes touch-and-go, touch-and-go darting after something lost. They need nourishment so they order, pay, and receive a little receipt slip from the bartender. In this diner, you get a number; there’s no table service. The man behind the counter doesn’t need to explain to anyone, not even the Queen of England, that when your number is up, so are you, straggling to the counter for your rations. Having done their part, our sensitive heroes take their unforgiving seats and wait.

     Across from them is a weedy man making a park bench out of two rigid chairs; we’re seeing his day bed, though in truth, anywhere he sprawls can be so-called. Don’t you see? He feels at home in the world. Aren’t you jealous? He sometimes startles strangers with shouted greetings. The lounger knows everybody because as he reposes, hands clasped behind his head, humanity in all its glory parades before him, and by essence of being a part of the panorama, no man can be a mystery. All that’s left of this Whitman’s daily bread is two plates, a crowd of salt packets and crumpled napkins overseen by a large coffee cup, still half full. He doesn’t attend to the blokes who had just fallen into the seats across from him because in the prison of the mind there could be no amity between them. The old television hanging from the wall buzzes with the morning news. Later, it’ll be changed to Telemundo so the lunching migrants can get their fútbol fix.

     Just then a black Paul Bunyon steps in, long legs ahead of his body, a Daddy Longlegs wearing sunglasses and a field cap. Before anything, he looks in on his lounging compatriot and there it is: Bunyon’s bellowed greeting is a match being struck; the former’s morning malaise vanishes and he gets back his ghost. Eyes flashing open he returns the greeting using his newfound outdoor-indoor voice. We needn’t understand any words – it is the tones of voice, the quick shuffle, the slap of palms, that paint a soundscape assuring us that everything is right with the world. It’s like when the mailman finally arrives; though he bears no mail for you, his mere appearance balances the axes. The sunglasses stay on Paul Bunyon as he orders the same thing he ordered the day before and will likely order tomorrow.

     Outside, sitting on the chairs chilled by night is the only women around. Her disheveled hair, shorts, and purple shirt recollect Madonna’s 1980s couture unchanged but for twenty years of weather. Most of our Madonna’s features are chiseled, but her eyes, nose, and speech retain a sly liquidity. It’s impossible to hear what she’s saying from inside the restaurant – maybe it was a good night for a change; the discussion with her bulging, curly-haired friend, is civil. They don’t eat, just drink in the warmth of the bare morning. The traffic behind them hums. Finally, her legs are under her again.

     A dirty car hurtles into the parking lot. Out steps a younger guy, skinny like a stiletto, with a crease in his slacks and a wrinkled shirt. He takes a few headlong steps towards the restaurant, realizes that he has forgotten something, returns to the car, grabs his cell phone and in the next instant stares, dazed, at the menu. His long night is betrayed by glazed eyes and the plunges of his gait. Still, fatigue doesn’t hide the noble quality of a man who may have been, hours before, the smartest guy in the room. Having decided, he begins to tell the proprietor his wishes only to forget his compound order midway through delivery. Embarrassment is unnecessary however, because a capable bartender soothes a tired man with a quiet word. “Is your bathroom open?” the boy asks, motioning to the “Employees Only” sign hanging from the door. “Go ahead, it’s open,” answers the kindly father.

     Before the workday begins, a man with a red tie and fat bald head will swaddle in the door, already perspiring. Already ready to go, to make the world over with a booming baritone, in which he lives; he eats while repeating his successful sales mantra – today is the day, today is the day, today is the day I will close, drumming through every bite of his steaming hot American breakfast.

     Later, the police on break from fighting crime, will step inside and banter with everyone’s friend, still recumbent on the hard plastic while his tall buddy gets nervous behind his sunglasses.

     This is the place where all men are equal because all men who need to eat can, at least, appreciate the screw in a day full of work ahead or night-time of trouble left behind. Especially a man who wakes up every morning while his wife sleeps, combs his hair, puts on his pants (one leg at a time), undershirt, white buttons, apron and goes to the diner. When the lights go on at the restaurant, it is a world beginning afresh every single morning of our lives whether we know it or not. At the little diner where we used to go when my father would ask my brother and I, “Are you guys hungry?” and we would burst with smiles and nods because eating out was still a holiday. There, I would order the Shrimp Special – still on the menu – dig into the side of sweet coleslaw and see myself, years later, writing ideas on a napkin.

     In high school, I overheard a physical education teacher say “These guys are in good shape now but watch, a few years out of high school, when their metabolism starts to slow down and nobody forces them to go to the gym, they’ll develop pot bellies – they’ll get fat.”

     At the time, like anything having to do with “real life,” the teacher’s prediction seemed a long way off. I wasn’t even particularly struck by the pessimism of the whole thing. Actually, I thought what he said with such stolid assurance was reasonable, just not for me, not then. Well I’m telling you now, “real life” seems to have handed me three-dozen donuts because I’m seven years out of high school and I think I’m becoming one of those fat guys.

     To be fair, I’ve always had a round belly. Even throughout my childhood, when my brother and I ran around all day playing every sport imaginable, I had what was then termed “baby fat.” It certainly can’t be called that anymore, but I look below and despite it being nameless there it still is – my companion. The problem now is not the mere existence of this coy area – that has been established – but its ongoing expansion; I’ve lost control, and I don’t think I like it.

     Let’s be clear about one thing, I did not ascertain the fact that I was expanding from studying my weight. I’m no scale-watcher. Like determining a book by its cover, I’ve always felt that it was kooky to reduce one’s vastness to a number, especially a number that fluctuates hourly. No, I use the people-scale to tell me everything I need to know; those closest to me have already acknowledged my ballooning belly with hidden jeers obscured by kind words. That’s okay, relations reserve the unalienable right to make fun of me. It was not until a couple of jolly old library patrons poked my midsection whilst notifying me of my burgeoning girth that things began to turn bleak.

     I’d like to think that my weight hasn’t changed much from high school. For a long time, I could say with a bit of a swagger, “Yeah, I’ve held the same weight for four years…” There were no smirks from the nurse when I was weighed at the doctor’s office. Yet, somewhere on the path to adulthood, unbeknown to me, my confident walk was exchanged for a penguin’s waddle. I might be exaggerating.

     Anyhow, I stayed at a crisp 160 pounds for a good while after high school. I had the baby fat, but nobody poked me. Later – up at around 180 lbs. – on a whim, I became a vegetarian and the people-scale pointed to my new found gaunt face – joy! Then, after a year of abstaining from animal flesh, I started eating meat again and, as a result of my body’s indignation at being filled with burgers, things took a heavy turn. Now, in an effort to optimize my diet, I’m a pescetarian (meaning I eat no meat, only fish) but feel like I’ve taken up agnosticism; I’m just not sure what’s going on. It’s been a few months of fish-eating and the people-scale is solidly against me. I don’t know what the scale-scale says – I’m afraid to look.

     Around the time I turned to vegetarianism I also took up jogging. Could that explain my gaunt face? If so, may I ask why I lost weight in my face and not my belly? I’m led to believe that bodies shed fat in genetically-predisposed places – some women complain that they lose their breasts and boyfriends before their thighs. If they can start around the middle, why do I have to work from face-to-bottom? So I’ve returned to jogging but it’s not as easy as it was in my sprightly youthful days – not when it feels like I’m carrying a kangaroo joey around the track. I’m thinking about joining a gym, but I prefer the smell of nature to sweaty towels. Still, now that I’m a jogger again, it surely won’t be long till obnoxious parents start pointing me out as an example to their soda-swilling kids. Sure, those portly children will hate me, but at least I’ll be emaciated. It won’t be long until third-world countries airdrop food to me. That’s how I’ll know I’m ready for America’s Next Top Model.

     Speaking of food, not only am I abstaining from meat, I’m also abstaining from coffee and soda. The coffee isn’t a big deal since I don’t drink much anyway, but if I can’t drink caffeinated soda, what can I use as a crutch for when I stay up into the night studying FAILBlog? Actually, I’m trying to eat better. The problem is that I’m lazy; chopping vegetables for a salad seems like such a hassle when there’s pie in the fridge!

     To be fair, I’m skinnier than most. Most whales. Most blimps. Most small planets. I’m like the before-before picture. I auditioned for the before picture, but didn’t make it. I’m the guy who’s not holding a newspaper in the before picture because he ate it. Things are changing though, I’ve stopped being the guy my friends turn to when they can’t finish their food – I’ve left that behind. Last week, Red Lobster called me about delivering their leftovers. Maybe I should see a therapist. I tried a Freudian once, but I left disgruntled; he thought that when I dreamed about eating all the muffins in the world it really had to do with my mother. I said “No way! I’m not sharing any muffins with her.”

     I do love muffins, and cobbler, and all those other delicious desserts, but it’s time to stop. If I don’t turn my eating habits around, foreign tourists will begin photographing themselves poking my belly. I can do better, I know it. I don’t have to be one of those fat guys the P.E. teacher predicted. I can lose the weight. I just need to stop eating everything I love.

     To be serious, I have changed my diet for the better and I am exercising. Now I linger. So far, it feels like I’ve ordered a scrumptious meal and am waiting way too long for the food to be served. Will the waiter’s tip suffer? It doesn’t matter. At least I won’t be tipping the scale.