Allee Willis Blog

12Jan 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – My Sunday Drive with Charles Phoenix

12Jan 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – My Sunday Drive with Charles Phoenix

One of my favorite things to do on a Sunday is to take a drive with my fabulous friend, Charles Phoenix, who knows the kitsch heights of Los Angeles and surrounding areas unlike anyone else on the planet. As we both adore LA and equally revere its vintage past, we regularly tool through sections of town with unbelievable architecture and restaurants still unscathed by the wrecking ball. Usually we have a set destination but this time we just decided to get in the car and let the wheels take us where they may.

Our first stop was at Spudnuts in Inglewood, where Charles had heard there were unbelievable donuts made out of potatoes. We had an appetizer there.

For the main course we hit Dinah’s in Culver City.

The 1950’s interior of Dinah’s is as fabulous as that massive bucket of fried chicken that hovers above the restaurant outside.

I especially like the carvings in the floor:

Charles and his fried chicken look excellent against the interior.

I got fried chicken too but it was my sides that were most impressive if one is judging on the culinary kitsch scale. First, there was my creamed spinach, which looked and tasted much more like elementary school paste:

Then there were my green beans. We were particularly fascinated by one particular bean as it was just a hollow tunnel with no bean inside. See how you can see clear down to the fork prong?

It’s just this kind of detail that makes this relaxed kind of day even better. There was also an outstanding detail at the IHOP we passed in Westchester, just outside LAX.

Most IHOP’s are known for their pancakes, not their horses:

Driving through Hawthorne we passed many modern 60s buildings like this…

…as well as fantastic signage like this:

We didn’t stop at Pizza Show as we were on our way to far more impressive vintage architecture and signage:

Each letter is mounted on a metal mesh canister that lights up.

The roofline is spectacular.

Other then the ratty white plastic chair that too many restaurants use for outdoor seating, the interior of Chips is just as fantastic as the exterior:

Also fantastic is the name of the whipped cream they squirt at Chips:

Charles had quite a lot of Affair going on inside his chocolate malt.

I had a sensible tossed salad with about 10,000 calories worth of Thousand Island dressing and a nice cup of watery vegetable soup.

Next we hit King’s Hawaiian Bakery in Torrance.

Charles, featured recently on the front page of the Wall Street Journal with his towering Chepumple pie/cake, wanted some King’s Rainbow Bread so we each bought a loaf. I think you can see why:

The only thing better at King’s than that psychedelic bread is the giant pineapple holding up the ceiling in the dining room.

We continued on through Torrance, passing many more incredible 1960s office buildings.Some people think these edifices look like crap. To us, they’re a Pantheon among Pantheons.

But by far, my favorite architecture in Torrance is the Palos Verdes Bowl.

The curved rock wall reminds me of 1950’s Vegas.

The cut-out metal overhangs are pretty great:

The font is even greater, with a new ‘O’ getting it almost right except the color:

But even more impressive than the bowling alley exterior was the outfit on this bowler:

It’s hard to see in this photo but that’s a matching shimmery lion shirt and pants. The way the sun bounced off the lion on this guy’s butt was astounding. The jeans were very shiny too. I can only hope that he had matching bowling shoes.

We left Palos Verdes and passed a plethora of great vintage signs like these in Lomita…

… and these in Long Beach:

We passed so many vintage motels they deserve a separate post. But this classic “Colonial” estabishment, with enough pillars to hold up a stadium, was one of my favorites. Fake facades are to motels what Liberace’s capes were to Liberace.

As the sun began to set, we passed this excellent mural saluting the working people of Long Beach. I especially love the marionette looking man or is it a woman out in front with the orange toupee.

Our last stop was at this historic Bob’s Big Boy in Downey. Originally built in 1958 as Harvey’s Broiler, it’s considered the birthplace of car culture dining. Unfortunately, some of the neon was out.

We did get these excellent photos with Big Boy though.

And we got to sit in a fabulous newly-tweaked-but-vintage-nonetheless interior:

And we ate very sensibly as Charles demonstrates with his fit-conscious cottage cheese…

… and me with my second tossed salad of the day. It seems blasphemous to be in an authentic diner and not get a lump of Thousand Island on something.

All in all a was a wonderful day, tooling around LA with a wonderful friend whose eyes absorb kitsch as fast as mine and whose stomach knows how to theme eat so that what goes in matches the staggering sites that lie outside.

08Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Kitschlicious Riverside, CA.

08Nov 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Kitschlicious Riverside, CA.

Last weekend I drove to Riverside to see a performance of The Color Purple, the musical I co-wrote. I tend to pick and choose the performances of the show I see based on how good the thrifts shops and vintage architecture is in the cities it’s playing in.

Riverside is only a little over an hour east of LA and has at least two blocks of nothing but thrift shops so that being a target city was pretty obvious. Besides, it gave me a chance to go to one of my favorite barbecue joints on the planet:

It’s always a good sign when your favorite joint is pushing your show as hard as the deep-fried turkeys and hams.

I discovered Gram’s Mission Bar-B-Que Palace, at the time in its original location two blocks west of where it is now, the first time I ever went to Riverside in the late 1980’s. Paul Rubens, a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman, and I took my van for a weekend thrift shop extravaganza. We stayed overnight at the famous Mission Inn, an architecturally historic hotel where Ronald and Nancy Reagan spent their honeymoon, and then, starting in Riverside, we hit every significant thrift shop between there and LA. My bed at The Mission Inn was directly under an astronomically huge stained-glass window of Jesus Christ. I woke up about 8 am. with Jesus’s light raining down on my body, which now itself looked like a stained glass Jesus. This felt somewhat blasphemous as a Jew so I ran to a open window across the room to get some air and there, rising like a miracle before me directly across the street, was a big ass barbecue smoker with plumes of rib greased smoke billowing out of it. I can’t even tell you how fast we bolted down there.

The only thing better than the ribs, fried chicken, catfish, meatloaf, yams, greens, mac ‘n cheese and cobbler we inhaled was the bridge table next to us that was covered with an extra long shag fake fur chessboard and foot tall handcarved chess pieces. I know I have a rib grease stained photo of it somewhere but all I can put my hands on right now is a photo of the cover of the menu.

All categories of chewables featured on the cover are excellent at Gram’s. By now, after all these years of coming here, I think I’ve only missed one thing on the menu:

Back to this trip, I left Gram’s stuffed like the pig that used to be attached to the ear and hit the thrifts. This spectacular 1950’s pushbutton ashtray was one of my more significant finds, especially as it was only $16 and I already own the matching desk fan and calendar.

Here’s Riverside on the ashtray:

For $1 I also got this incredible 1950’s beer and parfait glass.

Fish were a very popular design motif in the 1950’s.

Thank God, a few other things from the 1950’s abound in Riverside like these incredible vintage neon signs:

This sign isn’t neon but beautiful and 50’s nonetheless:

The matching restaurant is even better:

Thank God it was dark by the time I got back to the theater…

… because I parked just across the street and changed in the back of my van. I like having a van because not only does it accommodate any size of thrift shop purchase but it’s a portable dressing room as well. This would not have been the case had I been driving this vehicle that whizzed past me on my way back to the theater:

All in all, my day was fantastic. The show, the food, the sights, the thrift finds, all fantastic. So what’s not to love about a day trip to Riverside? Especially when everything but a Pigs Ear awaits me.

08Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1940’s Ship Salt & Pepper Shakers and the Maritime Hotel

08Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1940’s Ship Salt & Pepper Shakers and the Maritime Hotel

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I’ve never been on a cruise. I’ve gone sailing twice. I’ve been in a motor boat maybe 10 times. But make no mistake about it, I love boats. I love the sound of the water lapping up against them when you’re in them, I love what they look like. I’ve always wanted to go on a cruise – between the buffets, lounge acts and seafaring decor what’s not to love? But for now, I content myself with ship artifacts like this 1940’s plastic salt ‘n pepper shaker.

I have a lot of help around my house creating a perfect atmosphere for the ship salt and pepper shakers as it abounds with portholes. These particular ones came off a 1952 Chris-Craft boat.

I turned this porthole into a laundry chute.

When I had to spend tons of time in New York between 2002 and 2007 during the writing and production of my musical, The Color Purple, I insisted on staying at the Maritime Hotel. This is one of the most gorgeous buildings in the world as far as I’m concerned. Built in 1969 as the National Maritime Union, it’s 12 stories of pristine one inch white mosaic tiles with a four foot metal rimmed ship’s porthole in every room, of which there are are twelve on each floor.

The rooms are decorated like a ship’s cabin – dark wood, curves including the ceiling and laid out meticulously other than the contortions one must get into to operate the TV remote from bed. The lobby has stone reliefs of maritime activites and the floor echos the giant portholes in the rooms. But I’m not here to give a hotel tour and I’m not in New York and God knows if I’ll ever get my ass on a cruise. But when I look at this little seafaring salt and pepper shaker, its gorgeous red and white perfect 1940’s plastic self, it chills out my brain as if it were riding the waves instead of racing to post this blog.

25Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Leaving Pomplamoose and Hitting The Madonna Inn

25Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Leaving Pomplamoose and Hitting The Madonna Inn

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Yesterday, me and Mark Blackwell, who I work with, drove back to LA from up north in Sonoma where I was working with Pomplamoose. As I had raced through the last 48 hours to drive up there with a van full of props so we could shoot our “Shbaby” video, unloaded everything, danced and carried on like a lunatic for the video for much of the time, wrapped, re-wrapped and repaired instruments I had made out of foamcore, many of which weren’t happy taking the trip, singing and finishing tracks for another song, “R U Thinking”, finalizing our “Jungle Animal” video, racing back and forth to the hotel where someone who weighed at least 400 pounds was very fidgety in the room above me both nights… as all this was crammed into a less than 48 hour period I was drop dead T-I-R-E-D when it was time to head back yesterday morning.

The plan was that Mark and I were going to take a very leisurely drive down a very peculiar route back down to LA so we could see all these kitsch attractions we had never seen before. But the morning started out with me discovering that my trustee MacBook Pro had finally died. Dead as in completely, totally, this-is-going-to-cost-you-a-lot-of-money DEAD. At least I still had my iPad but this too had been giving me trouble like refusing e-mails from certain of my e-mail accounts, not retaining saves after I took copious notes, and the dictation program working as if I was speaking in Chinese. I also had my two iPhones, both of which are very early versions of the phone, and if you even look at either one of them funny the batteries instantly drain. Now I am someone who is very technology dependent. I’m also a gadget freak. The only way you ever see me with one of anything is if the mate had recently died and I hadn’t had a chance to replace it yet. But here I was miles away from home with a heap of scrap metal technology with a blog to get out and a social network to attend to before we even packed the van.

After an hour delay, we were on the road, whipping through towns I’ve never heard of where the temperature was inching towards 110° in a van with malfunctioning maintenance messages flashing on the navigator every 20 minutes, not to mention I’d had very little sleep in the last 36 hours. Not necessarily the set up for Allee taking a nice, relaxing drive home. We decided to take highway 99 that intersects the 5, a fast but excessively dull drive that puts you in LA from San Francisco in five hours. The 99, on the contrary, takes a couple more hours as it swings way east. But it hits the 5 again down past Fresno so there didn’t appear to be much to lose. Other than we didn’t count on a fire breaking out on the Grapevine, a brutal section of the 5, when a big rig overturned and spilled hundreds of thousands of carrots across all four lanes and somehow ignited a fire. Which then sent us on one of the wackiest and lonnnngest detours I’ve ever taken, changing what could have been a six-hour trip into a 14 hour pilgrimage and putting us home at 2 AM. Here we are passing one of the trillion or so tankers that reflected the 110° heat back to us as we made bandannas stuffed with ice cubes to stay cool:

Thank God, before we realized we would be taking a trip of such epic proportions we passed this building off the 99 which at least fulfilled our dreams of seeing some kitschy sights. Unfortunately, there weren’t many of them but this is a bulldozer building that I would love to call my own.

We finally pulled into a town called Atwater that looked like it might have some interesting possibilities after three consecutive motel signs led us to believe that perhaps the town was untouched by time.

But it hit us almost immediately that time had, indeed, marched through Atwater and there was really nothing outstanding in the way of vintage or kitsch. I’m sure the Atwaterians see this as progress but we were bummed. Especially as this city has the longest traffic lights in history. I could have done with having more to see than a Marie Callendars on the main drag where we were for all most 15 minutes after two agonizing long lights and the longest train I’ve ever seen in my life.

A waiter at Marie’s told us how to cut over to the 101, something we realized we had to do it unless we wanted to sit in a steam room breathing in carrot scented smoke in a traffic jam of legendary proportion that is a signature of that part of the 5 – there are signs at both ends of the Grapevine that recommend you turn your air conditioner off because the grade is so steep it kills cars. So we took the 152 to jump from the 99 to the 101.

For a minute there it seemed like the beauty of the 152, passing through towns and circling a huge reservoir, was worth adding a couple of hours onto our trip. But when the 152 finally dumped us back onto the 101 it was an hour plus above Monterey, as if we’d driven in the shape of someone who was smiling hard and ended up wayyyyy north, six or seven hours still to go to make it to LA and we had already been in the car for six hours. A straight route down the 101 and 5 from Sonoma would have had me home an hour ago.

But there was one thing and one thing only that put my head in a better space. A few hours down the 101 was The Madonna Inn, a masterpiece of kitsch. No, that’s not saying enough, the Sistine Chapel of Kitsch, nestled right next to the 101 in San Luis Obispo. If we drove fast enough, the dining room would still be open and sitting in the midst of this I don’t care if they served me a tin can I would be happy. We were very happy indeed sitting in the Madonna pink deliciousness and all that accompanied it.

And after eating this classically American meal…

… I got to take my hopefully last bathroom break here before I arrived home in hopefully 3-4 hours:

Now mind you, I’ve just shown you the main dining room. There’s still the coffee shop, spa and gift shop that features items like this bedazzeled peace t-shirt…

And then there’s the 100 uniquely themed rooms, no two alike, with names like California Poppy, Canary Cottage, Edelweiss, Jungle Rock, Imperial Family, Pick & Shovel and about 100 more in the hotel itself.

I would like to thank The Madonna Inn for coming to the aid of two road weary travelers after a couple intense days of incredibly great music and one day of the most circuitous trip I’ve ever taken. I would have wished for there to be more to see along the carrot/diesel-fumed detour we were forced to take but all in all it was an incredible three days. So also, thank you, Pomplamoose…

… and thank you, Mark, for driving every inch of the entire trip…

… and, once again, thank you, Madonna Inn, for adding a bit of sparkle to an otherwise exceedingly lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng, hotttttt day.

23Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Maestro The Musical Bingo” Game and Working with Pomplamoose

23Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – “Maestro The Musical Bingo” Game and Working with Pomplamoose

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This game felt especially fitting because it’s supposed to teach you how to play by ear. Not only did I never learn to play by ear but I never learned to play period. Which makes the fact that my songs have sold over 50 million records a very kitschy thing indeed! I don’t suppose this game will help me, though, as there are no instructions included. I was never good at following instructions with anything anyway which is why just about everything I do is so spontaneous and free form. Which is what I loved about Pomplamoose when everyone started sending me links to their version of my song,“September”. I sent them a message and asked them if they wanted to write something together, something I never do, but I thought they were so fresh and casual and inventive that it would be a good match. From the looks of their videos it looked like they already knew what this game had to teach.

A few weeks later in late December, 2009, Jack and Nataly, a.ak.a. Pomplamoose, drove down from Northern CA. and we knocked out the healthy beginnings of six songs, shooting footage for the videos as we recorded.

We spent three more days together up north in June and are in the midst of a whirlwind day and half as we speak. We have three videoSongs about ready to pop out of the oven, all of which I’m very excited about. They’re a fantastic blend of the similar in spirit yet very different styles we have.

If we took any breaks, which we don’t, I might try and figure out how to play “Maestro The Musical Bingo”. But I’ve always been able to keep up just by banging pencils together and humming into one of the four digital recorders and two cell phones that are always on me and singing higher than the illegitimate child of a BeeGee and a chipmunk.

One of the greatest kitsch aspects of “Maestro The Musical Bingo” is that in one place it says it was made in 1939 and in another 1940.

I find trying to learn anything that involves any kind of math memorization hard enough without starting off with a teacher who is so confused as to not know their correct date of birth. But I can deal with this inconsistency because I’ve done pretty well not going by hard numbers or knowing the rules. So I think my involvement with “Maestro The Musical Bingo” is just to admire how pretty it is and let it sit here staring at me in my recording studio…

I will concentrate much more on writing great songs and doing great videos and, in the case of our first Pomplamoose with Allee Willis release, “Jungle Animal”, designing a spectacularly cagey and musical online music game and contest that will launch right before “Jungle Animal” comes out. This will hopefully be within a few weeks, whenever we can finish enough to put the puppy, or lion as it were, out there.

In the meantime should I find a spare a second I might try moving a few markers around and attempt to learn the names of the keys that my fingers fall on as I poke out tunes that come into my head. I doubt that I will make it far into the jungle known as musical theory but the important part is that whatever little animals I hum turn into songs and find their own way out of the jungle. Thus far I have led a pretty successful Safari, with or without a guide to assist me.

22Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – CBer’s Prayer Plaque and On The Road To Work With Pomplamoose

22Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – CBer’s Prayer Plaque and On The Road To Work With Pomplamoose

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As I cruise along the 5 and 101 freeways up north to finish three videoSongs with Pomplamoose, my trusty CBer’s Prayer Plaque is in place on the dash. Before modern technology, the CB radio leading the way in multi-vehicle communication, my traveling life was hell. I never actually had a CB but I did marvel at how trucks could warn each other of impending Smokies or fabulous truck stops with Blue Plate Specials. Now that I have a cell phone, well, several cell phones, an Ipad and my laptop that I plug into the cigarette lighter I’m much more inclined to travel because I can stay connected. I never really had a desire to leave my life behind and now I don’t have to.

Although trucks no longer have CBs because the drivers use cell phones just like the rest of us it doesn’t stop them from expressing themselves. Native American Indians have been a big theme on the trip so far today.

We also passed someone who plans to do a lot of riding:

And then of course there’s this:

Which makes me want to stop for this:

I don’t need a CB as I have all my regular communications paraphernalia with me.

I also have a navigator to tell me where the nearest hot dog joint is. which is great as I don’t need to wait for all the Beavers to answer me.

Thank God for modern technology.

18Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Souvenir Of Detroit Shoe and My Love Letter To Detroit in Time Magazine

18Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Souvenir Of Detroit Shoe and My Love Letter To Detroit in Time Magazine

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When the post I wrote for Time Magazine‘s wonderful Detroit Blog was published yesterday, my love for Detroit escalated even higher than the sky-high affection I already had for the city I grew up in that still inspires just about every move I make. Despite whatever you might think of Detroit for anything you may have heard about it’s slow and agonizing demise over the years, it’s still the Soul capital as far as I’m concerned and a city that has the potential to lead us into the future this century as it did much of the last. As anyone who’s half evolved knows, when things fall apart it becomes a ripe breeding ground for rebirth in new and magnified ways. The revolution is coming and it’s already arrived in Detroit. My love letter to my city is here.

I’ve always collected kitsch souvenirs from Detroit. I have everything from custom painted Detroit bottles to can openers, pot holders, funeral fans, miniature cars, notebooks, pencils, rolling pins and more. But this little unassuming shoe has always been one of my favorites.

As small as this souvenir high heel is, only 2 1/2 inches long, it’s as giant in stature to me as the old 25′ x 30′ x 20′ stove that sat out in front of The Michigan State Fairgrounds for years on Woodward Avenue. I used to drive by it every day and wonder if I would ever learn to cook. The answer remains no.

And then there’s the giant tire that started life out as a ferris wheel at the ’64 New York Worlds Fair and was then moved to the side of I-94 where it still sits to this day. I’ve had better success with tires than with cooking though not as much as with shoes.
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Detroit is a city that many may have lost faith in, a shrinking blip on the map, no longer looming above the horizon of hope like a massive stove or tire. But the naysayers should remember that spirit and strength are qualities that lie inside and, when nurtured, can bloom in the most unexpected places and ways. All it takes is the brains and balls to stay the course, and the belief that change is the one constant in our life and that it can be steered like a big giant-finned Caddy to a better place if enough people just believe that can happen. People from Detroit have always dreamed and given the world some amazing gifts – cars and Motown for starters. So I have faith that whatever comes of the ashes of Detroit will be great. It may just look like baby steps now – afterall, the shoe is tiny – but get outta the way because wheels are turning and the footprints that will be left are BIG.

17Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Original Holiday Inn Ashtray

17Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Original Holiday Inn Ashtray

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When the first four Holiday Inns were built in 1953, this was the ashtray that was sitting in the rooms. Heavy glass with raised lettering and cigarette rests, the shape is perfect 1950’s, the font iconic. I don’t go out of my way to collect Holiday Inn artifacts, but through the years I’ve amassed cups, matches, ashtrays from all the decades, postcards, playing cards, ice tea spoons, room keys and more. I even have this sign from a Holiday Inn somewhere in California. It’s rusty but you would be too if you baked outside for the last 60 years.

I’ve always loved the concept of Holiday Inns, the first roadside chain motel founded on the concept that if you knew what you were getting you would feel as comfortable as if you were home. The rooms were all basically the same – clean, family-friendly and really easy to get to because signs like this were in clear view of the highways. And in the 1950’s everyone was on the road. The war was over, the cars were massive and beautiful, and the American middle class mindset was such that they thought they might soon be vacationing on the moon. I didn’t own this Studebaker until the 1980’s but the parking lots of Holiday Inns were all stuffed full of eye-popping gems like this so that as soon as you turned into them you were psychologically prepped to enjoy your stay.

This was taken in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn in 1986. I got a room one day to write because I couldn’t concentrate at home.

I never smoked in my car so it remained as pristine and lovely as one of the rooms in a Holiday Inn. If I had smoked though, I might have lifted this from my room so my ash was deposited in something as stylish as my car.

But, alas, I bought it on eBay along with this postcard, longing for the days when life was this beautiful, convenient, stylish and cheap.

26Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Portable Banana Keeper

26Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Japanese Portable Banana Keeper

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I’m not sure which kitsch factor I enjoy most about this made in Japan Portable Banana Keeper, the fact that it’s pierced with hearts because it loves bananas so much,…

…or that you can wear it as a necklace,…

…or that the little latches that keep your banana secure are so hard to pop open it will only last for two or three reloadings,…

…or that my cat loves it…

…or that there’s a special one for green bananas…,

…so special, in fact, that it’s called a Banana Case…

…as opposed to its yellow big brother,…

…The Banana Keeper,…

…and is scientifically designed with tiny holes instead of large hearts…

…to ripen your fruit quicker despite the fact that few people I know would walk around with their banana around their neck for days while they waited for it to ripen.

Or maybe it’s simply the fact that all bananas aren’t created equal and some don’t fit into their new home.

Whatever the case may be, I love plastic convenience products from Japan. And I don’t really care if the Banana Keeper/ Banana Case works or lasts at all as long as it continues to make my cat happy.

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Thank you, aKitschionado Margaret Lewis, for your generous contribution of one Banana Case and two Banana Keepers to The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch at AWMOK.com!

22Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Jeweled-Look Jeans on Half Mannequin Crossing Guard at Fancy Italian Store

22Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Jeweled-Look Jeans on Half Mannequin Crossing Guard at Fancy Italian Store

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There are many things I love about this “Italy” fashion emporium in Van Nuys, California:

• The thoughtfully placed swathed-in-jeweled-look-denin-jeans torso-less mannequin so that her ass is facing incoming customers and hogging up much of the walkway.

• The only entrance to the store being from the crowded parking lot in back.

• The accent traffic cone.

• The Hush Gentleman’s Club sign on the roof adding even more exterior elegance.

• The big sale for 1 suit, 1 shirt and 1 tie for $99 despite there being no evidence of men’s clothing inside.

• The bar outside:

• The decidedly tropical, nowhere near Rome mural painted on the side of the store.

But more than anything, it’s the jeweled-look jeans at the end of the store’s asphalt carpet that race the distinctly non-Italian named Virgil’s the final mile up the mountaintop of Kitsch. Dotted with paint, the glittering rhinestone patterns are sure to glisten forever, insuring the classy Virgil’s vibe stay with each and every discerning customer long after she leaves the parking lot.