I think the notion of time passing has been so interesting to ponder. The idea of observing myself and what my day-to-day routine looks like has always seemed interesting to me, but to observe your own behavior for weeks on end isn’t easily accomplished. These posts seem to give me a sense of footing within the amplified sensitivity to chaos my mind’s been going through as a result of traveler’s anxiety these past weeks. So hopefully in writing this post, I will achieve some clarity as to what I’m really thinking.
I tried to spend this week less concerned with seeing what the city has to offer, as a brochure might read. I focused my energy more towards my readings, as well as finding examples in real life of the ideas presented in the book. I still made sure to get outside and go places, as it would be foolish not to take advantage of my time here and do things specific to being in L.A. I did a lot this week, and it definitely got me thinking… But I’ve got to be honest, it’s tough articulating all of it. And though I see similarities and am making connections between different ideas, I’m unsure how to properly and clearly connect them in this text.
Last Wednesday I was in the Design District on Melrose Avenue. I was there for a few different reasons. Though the hipsters in my neighborhood are very interesting to observe both socially and with regard to fashion, I wanted to see if I could go somewhere that would show L.A. fashion. I’ve since reexamined that thought, as Los Angeles is so disconnected that nothing besides clothing suited for the weather could really encompass all of this city. Nevertheless, I wanted to see the design district, as I love clothing and design. I’ve seen three main ways that high-end clothing is being sold here, the 1st being department stores, 2nd being brand-storefronts and the third being boutiques. Sunset Boulevard is about a ten-minute skate from my house, and it has quite a few small boutiques. The design district had lots of brand storefronts.
Just going into these stores is fun for me. I love going inside and looking through stuff way to expensive for me, just because they can’t tell me to leave. The real reason I found myself in that area though, was because of a video I watched on Complex magazine’s website. Shopping with A$AP Rocky. The video is from a series where someone from the magazine goes shopping with a rapper for shoes, but A$AP Rocky said he didn’t want to go sneaker shopping, and instead he took them to a high-end boutique in Los Angeles called Maxfield. I found the boutique online, and the website said they sold clothing, furniture, and vintage fashion, architecture, art, and music books. I figured even if I can’t afford $1,000 jeans, maybe I could get a book. I parked about a mile and a half away so I could walk down Melrose and just look at all of the shops and people. When I got to the place Google maps took me, all I saw was an almost empty valet parking lot, and a concrete building that looked like a starving travel agency. I looked across the street and saw a building that read Maxfield. It had all glass windows, and weird looking furniture inside, furniture that looked like sculptures. I walked to the door and saw a sign that said, “Ring Door Bell.” I didn’t want to ring and have some furniture salesmen come over, so I just opened the door. It was giant and wooden, kind of heavy but it opened super smooth. A lady came fast pacing around the corner and asked me “Hello?”
“Hey do you guys have books here?” I asked.
“It’s the other building, across the street.”
I asked if she would point it out because I couldn’t find it, but she cut me short, saying “there’sonlyonebuilding. it’soverthere. see!?”, she pointed across the street, her arm resembling someone who probably loves Hitler. I left.
I walked to the other side again, this time I spotted a Rolls Royce in the driveway of the parking lot. I walked over to what I thought was originally a tacky travel display, and realized it was actually art. I walked around the corner, following a tentative polished concrete path. I saw the doors and went inside. I was greeted by the usual friendly suspicious retail “Helllloooooo”. I asked for the books and headed to the back, where the salesman pointed. A saleswoman with an eastern European accent came over shortly and asked if I needed any help. As it turns out, the books were also thousands of dollars. Luckily they had some less-expensive, non-vintage books, one of which I bought.
On my walk back to my car, I got a call from Konstantine Valissarakos. He’s a family friend who works real estate down here. He restores vintage homes and sells them to L.A.’s affluent. I’d been waiting to get an interview with him for about a week. He said he was coming home from work a bit early, so we arranged to meet at his house at 6:15. On the phone, I mentioned that I’d just bought a book on fashion, and he told me he had a biography on Vivenne Westwood, and though he’s a huge fan he wasn’t going to read it and he said I could have it. I was stoked! He called me at 4:38. According to my phone, I was 15 minutes from home and home was 10 minutes from Kostantines house. But I went straight from there to my house, grabbed my notebook, left for his house immediately and didn’t get there until 6:20. On the phone, he said that he lived beneath the Hollywood sign. As I got closer, I came upon an incredibly narrow, steep, windy road. It was so narrow that I would have to back up the whole thing if another car came. Luckily I found his place and parking was easy enough. The roads were narrow, clean, with high walls on either side, broken up by tall shrubs, gates, and fences. I found the address, which led to another tall wooden door (my second finding of a tall wooden door that day). I tried to open the door but it was locked, and I couldn’t figure out how the buzzer worked. Eventually he came and opened the door.
If I met Kostantine when I was young, I still didn’t remember how he looked. His parents were good friends with my grandparents, and my grandma had connected him and I via email. I just knew that I’d heard about what he did, thought it was cool and wanted to be able to talk to him. We went inside and he handed me the Vivienne Westwood book, as well as some food wrapped in Tin Foil, it was his mother’s Greek Easter bread. He gave me a tour of the house. It was 2 and ½ stories. His living room had an amazing view of Los Angeles, and his house was filled with many relics, all of which had a backstory. There was a large shoe parking lot right at the entrance. It was an interesting arrangement, everything from high tech runners to loafers, tons of shoes. I asked if all of them belonged to him, he told me no but he just grabs whatever is fastest in the morning. After the tour I interviewed him for about 45 minutes and recorded the conversation. It’s hard to process everything I learned from Kostantine, but what I saw was a valuable experience.
We sat down, and I started by asking him when he came down to Los Angeles. He told me about a few of his first sales, but the conversation quickly became more conceptual. He was a good conversationalist, he seemed like someone who means everything he says, 100%, and it’s hard to convey the weight of what that was like through words alone. His younger years were spent in Wenatchee, my hometown. From the time he was eight years old, he was working in his parents restaurant, which was noted by my family as being both extremely hospitable and very well decorated. He sold his first house before he graduated from college, and eventually moved down to Los Angeles. He was fearless, and jumped right into his work at a young age. He now works with Sotheby’s and has an impressive list of houses he has completed and is still working on. He was wearing athletic shorts and a t-shirt, and told me that’s what he wore to work everyday. I could tell from our conversation that Konstantine must be great working in such a people profession. But I couldn’t have anticipated what he was like, aside his job. What I learned though is that he is his job. Sothebys is his company, but he’s his own brand. Konstantine described something to me he calls “creative capitalism”. In essence, wanting to make a lot of money but doing so completely honestly. The reason he goes to work in shorts and a t-shirt is because his branding says what you see is what you get. As he puts it, that’s how confident he is in the houses he sells, that he shouldn’t have to wear a suit or drive his clients in a $100,000 car. Konstantine says this branding of values is something he got from growing up and working for a small business in Wenatchee, which he describes, to my accord, as the complete opposite of Los Angeles. What I find so interesting is that while his clientele may be like the people I saw on Melrose Avenue, he isn’t concerned with an incorrect image, only a truthful image, as he puts it. Image still matters, but it needs to speak to something honest. In his case, it speaks to the way he does business.
Over the next week I read the Vivienne Westwood Biography. Prior to this trip, on my reading list was a biography of Malcom Mclaren. What I didn’t know until reading this book is that Vivienne Westwood played a critical role in the Malcom Maclaren Story (emergence of punk, sex pistols, etc.). Vivienne Westwood was heavily responsible for punk, she designed all of the clothing for the sex pistols, and had a high-end boutique called Sex. She’s 74 now, still working “as hard as the interns”. According to the biography, punk is the first popular music movement to have fundamental roots in high fashion designs. Vivienne designed the image of what came to be known as punk. Co-Author Ian Kelley noted the most unique thing about Vivienne being the childlike enthusiasm and energy she has managed to sustain up to age 74, still pulling consecutive all-nighters during Paris fashion week and living off of apples and tea.
I came down here wide eyed (still wide eyed), wondering how I could connect the dots between music I love, clothing I love, and people making all of that happen. Being in L.A. personifies the way MTV might paint the young American’s dream—flashy clothing, flashy cars, and the luxury of isolation. It makes me feel like a dot in such a big city, and ultimately I find myself questioning why I ever wanted to do the things I want to do. Everyone here looks like an artist and everyone wishes for that dream. I think so many people must seek success because of what they see around it, almost all of what that catches their attention being something they don’t have. But many successful people I’ve met and talked to don’t seemed concerned with things surrounding them. There are for sure rich asinine people, but the people we know who did truly great things don’t live forever in the moments witnessed and envied by everyone else. So why would it make sense chasing success for the things I see around success, when the most successful people I’ve met don’t seem concerned with that at all. It reminds me of the saying, “don’t follow the footsteps of the greats, seek what they sought.” If one wishes to achieve success with anything, it doesn’t make sense to chase the things surrounding it. As I experienced with Kostantine, having expensive things doesn’t make you important.