October 19, 2011 – Divine

Today would have been the 66^th birthday of one America’s greatest actor’s, Baltimore’s Glenn Milstead, who most of us know as Divine.

I own and love most of Divine’s films, the ones by John Waters as well as Paul Bartel’s Lust in the Dust. I still have my original, the good one with photos, Odorama card from the original release of Polyester. I took friends visiting from Sweden to see that one and they still haven’t recovered. The day Hairspray opened in 1988, I left a post-it on my computer saying I was “running errands” and with a few other delinquent co-workers we took in a lunch and a matinee premier. It was all of a week later that we were shocked by Divine’s sudden death.

I love corrupting young minds with Divine. Don’t worry — I wouldn’t start with Pink Flamingoes. When my cousins were just 12 and 14 they came down from Washington. They are from a small town on the Columbia River just far enough from Portland to be close to Mortville. Ten minutes into Hairspray I had to pause it and explain the historical context. My cousins knew virtually nothing of the history of the civil rights movement. That says something about the quality of education in Clark County, Washington. Soon after that my 12 year old cousin Thad was suspended from school due to his “disruptive” hair. It was a bit of life imitating art up there (today he’s a former juvenile delinquent and punk rock star now – Divine would be proud). We finished off the weekend with Serial Mom and Pecker. Call me a bad influence. I should also mentioned that Divine was such a brilliant actor that the boys had no idea he was actually a man. I stopped the movie halfway through and told them.

One of the things that strikes me about the passing of time, is the way one can end up doing something in the present that would have been hard to imagine years before. 18 years after Divine’s passing I found myself at 7940 Hollywood Boulevard. A work colleague casually mentioned that he lived in Divine’s old apartment. As soon as I got down to Los Angeles I headed straight there.

The first thing that made me laugh and grab the camera was the sign in the courtyard reading Please Clean Up after Your Pet. The building was one of those groovy two-story, courtyard apartment buildings so typical of Los Angeles. It was about to be torn down to make way for something ugly and bigger. I knew I wanted something old from the apartment and I decided to take all the light switch plates. I had a stack of new ones to swap out – my work colleague was concerned about getting his deposit back – even though they were about to tear down the apartment building. He was probably right.

My intent is to use the switch plates for a Divine Light art project — I still have them and will one day get to that. On that morning, I got out my screwdriver and went to work taking the old switch plates and replacing them with new ones. It was going quickly until I got to the kitchen. I was by myself in the kitchen, and try as I might, the screws wouldn’t come loose in that last one. Finally I turned around and said aloud, “Okay Divine, you’ve looked at my ass long enough, let me get this done.” That was all it took and the screw came right out. And seriously, all the laughter Divine has brought me, I didn’t mind his ghost checking out my ass one bit.

October 18, 2011 – A Map to Meet Your Neighborhood Ghosts

Years ago I discovered the Sanborn Maps. They are detailed maps prepared for fire insurance purposes. They had every building in the City on them and were bound in large, cumbersome books. I’ve spent hours in the history room at the main library perusing the edition of maps from the 1880’s. Now, I can do it right from home. The 1905 edition is available online. I love cutting up old maps for my artwork. But I do set some limits for myself. I wouldn’t cut up a Sanborn map — these are digital images that have been reproduced.

With Halloween approaching the maps could come in handy if you were looking to meet some of the ghosts in the neighborhood. They reveal buildings that were in the Lower Haight in 1905. Some structures are still there and some have been replaced. The maps sometimes have details of business located in different buildings.

I have been around long enough to remember the abandoned taxi garage on Haight between Pierce and Steiner. Lofts are on that location now. But the space had a long time in the transportation business — it used to be the Haight Street Stables. Do the loft dwellers occasionally hear the heavy breathing of a draft horse or the distinct sound of its hooves?

A block north of the stables, on Page Street, there is a church in a building that used to be home to a dance academy (I’ve seen some old photos). Before that was built the street was empty except for a Chinese Laundry. I imagine the church ladies startled by a gentle tap on the shoulder and a whisper of Cantonese in their ear.

There were Chinese Laundries all over the neighborhood. One was down the street from me on Oak. And further down the block was a French Laundry that still is a Laundromat today (and one with a very sweet ghost who was the proprietress for years). Across the street at Haight and Scott is a dry cleaners that used to be a bakery (I wish the bakery would come back). The Tae Kwon Do Academy was a bicycle repair shop.

Many people mistake the old telegraph office on Page Street for a bank. We almost lost that building in the dot.com boom. The maps mark it as a Telephone Building in 1905. In the middle of that block was a windmill.

My building was built in 1927. The lot was empty before then, an outcropping of serpentine had to blasted away to fit the building into the lot. There is a church parking lot in the middle of the block where zipcars rest. One hundred years ago a “machine shop” with a gas engine was at the back of the lot. Nowadays, maybe only the ghosts remember what was made in the shop.

July 16, 2011 – Le Lustre

One might assume that chandelier has the same meaning in French. Yet chandelier is actually the word fro candlestick. Lustre is what the French call a chandelier and appropriately from where we also get the English word luster.

There is a chandelier at the Legion of Honor that is probably the most beautiful one in San Francisco — words like luster, brilliant and radiant can all be applied. The chandelier compels many visitors to get the camera out. The artist Timothy Horn even did a magnificent recreation of the chandelier — in sugar! The chandelier hangs in one of the period rooms, a salon from the Hôtel de la Trémoille in Paris circa 1781. I always make a point to linger in that room on every visit to the Legion.

I have been told that ghosts live in glass doorknobs. If that is true, I can just imagine what sort of spirits watch over the room from the crystals in the chandelier. The room itself always feels a bit haunted, but the spirits seem to tolerate those of us who appreciate the allure of pre-revolutionary France. The Legion of Honor may be one of the most haunted places in San Francisco. The building sits on top of a cemetery where the gravestones were removed but many of the graves were left behind. I can just imagine what the building is like after hours. Do the ghosts of old Paris and Gold Rush Era San Francisco get along together? It could make for a good story.