Many years ago Harry and I wandered Melrose Avenue, sometime, of course, in the 80’s, where most of my best stories come from.(this next part taken from Wikipedia) Melrose, it’s most famous section, known as the Melrose District, is the West End through West Hollywood and Hollywood. The Western End, popularly referred to as Melrose Heights, runs from Santa Monica Blvd. to Fairfax Avenue and features a variety of upscale restaurants, boutiques, and salons such as Elixir (teahouse), The Bodhi Tree (metaphysical and New Age bookstore), the Dussault Motel (headquarters of Dussault Apparel, Inc.), Fred Segal, Plush Home, and The Improv (world famous comedy club.)
North of the intersection with La Cienega Boulevard is Melrose Place, a branch of the main avenue made famous thanks to the TV show of the same name. However, in actuality, Melrose Place does not feature any residences, but instead is home to a number of high-end boutiques and salons.
The eastern end of the district, which runs from Fairfax to Highland Avenue, became a popular underground and new wave shopping area in the early 1980s, featuring the opening of stores such as Vinyl Fetish and Retail Slut, both of which closed several years ago. The Burger That Ate L.A., a landmark fast food stand, was replaced with a Starbucks in recent years, and the area has witnessed an upsurge in tourism and a significant decrease of the underground and countercultural elements. The original Johnny Rockets opened in this part of Melrose in 1986. In 2005 Musician and Director Joe Hahn member of the world renowned rock band Linkin Park, opened his concept retail store SURU on the 7600 block of Melrose.
In the 80’s wandering down the street at the eastern end of the district, we wandered into a large, colorful sex shop. I usually portray myself in these pages as the bright eyed, innocent nymph, and usually I am correct. In this case, while I had never been into a sex shop before, I did know where I was. Harry, sophisticated educator, writer and musician, a Southern California native, would surely have been toughened by the mean streets, but I was wrong.
He stood there, looking around, picked up a large (the size of my arm) black, gnarly dildo, and asked, “What’s this?”
I just couldn’t stop laughing!
Well, I hasten to point out that Arthur was my dean at the time, see, and I was reluctant to let on that I had any sort of familiarity with so sordid a place as we had innocently wandered into. I figured I'd better. uh, pretend not to know much about such things.
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