My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

Of course my neighbor’s son must take all his clothes off before he can poop so maybe he isn’t the best example of proper bathroom etiquette.

Don’t ask for permission, ask for a blind eye.

People ask my girlfriend, “What are you?”, wanting to know if she’s Chinese or not. I interrupt and answer, “She’s mostly beautiful with a bit of drop dead in her, but not enough to kill you.”

When you go out to dinner or a movie and you’re tired and ready to leave, do you say “let’s go to the landlord’s” or “let’s go home?”
(Wait for response)
You call it your home, and you deserve to get the dirt out of your home don’t you?
(wait for response)
*notes on a envelope from a Kirby vacuum salesman

This garbage needs your help. Please bring it to the store so it can be sold and avoid the landfill.

The Pacific Ocean is gnawing away the bluffs of San Francisco’s western-most shore a mere 15 blocks away from the swinging doors of Mixed Nuts, the shop Jimbo and I are opening March 2nd.

There’re a few dim sum opportunities and a movie rental/photo copy combination place between here and there, and the non descript typewriter repair shop no one can believe is still in business.

3 story apartment buildings line the boulevard and just before the concrete beach wall is reached, the sodium lights of Safeway’s parking lot spill light towards the lifeless night of the ocean. But after us, you can’t stop in and buy a black light poster of Pegasus, or a small lot of embroidery floss, no matter how much money you have.

There’s something odd about choosing a place others would choose not to live. The foggy edge of town built on shifting sand dunes and skipped over by transit authority upgrades.

People these days need to shop to have human interaction, it’s the only crowd the police will tolerate. That is the only hope Mixed Nuts has out here in the Outer Richmond voting district.

Before the 1930′s this was all undeveloped dunes and referred to as the Outside Lands. There was no way to farm it, no reason to visit it, just a geographical two mile hurdle before you landed at the ocean.

To many, the Richmond continues to be a place to tolerate, an ugly blight of treeless same after same stucco front triple deckers that act as an apertif to the eyes, opening them wider and expectant to the beauty of the waves crashing over rocks at the edge of the continental shelf colloquially known as Ocean Beach.

Jimbo and I can’t give a fuck about all that. We gotta sell several thousands of dollars worth of garbage every month if this things gonna pan out.

Los Angeles is a city of opportunity! He went from playing a banjo that wouldnt hold a tune in San Francisco to playing in the largest sporting event in America. Did anyone hear what team he was on? What’s that? Not on a team, on a commercial? Oh. Okay. A Superbowl commercial is like the superbowl of commercials though, right? So we’re still excited, right?

After watching the commercial I gave Douglas a call and we talked about it.

MRIP: Has anyone stopped you and recognized you?

Doug: This Mexican lady I was serving asked if she saw me on the Superbowl, but later she found some of my hair in her casserole so it kinda took a little glamour off the moment.

MRIP: Your hair in her casserole?

Dougy: My hair’s gotta be in a ton of these entrees.

MRIP: Where you working?

Doogles: 11 to 2 Thursday and Friday at Rocket Pizza. Right downtown where we went to that bar.

MRIP: So you didn’t get rich off the thing?

Dr. Doogies: I don’t have any control, neither does the agency, it just depends on how much airtime it gets. So to have a complete LA experience I’m a server . Needs me some walkin’ around money.

MRIP: Where are you now?

Chug-a-lug-Doug: In traffic coming back from Santa Monica. Had an audition with Austin…some guy kicks a box of chicken strips out of our hands and yells, “CHICKEN COPS!” I didn’t feel good about it. Frankly, I felt sickened.

MRIP: This is the first thing you’ve been in that got airtime. Give us some behind the scenes details.

Purple Hayes: In the description of the character there’s backstory that I’m a team mascot going off to college. That was my motivation, but all that stuff gets lost. I had a 6 am call time – luckily it was ten minutes from my house, over in South Pasadena. Ate egg muffins in a trailer. Spent 2 hours in a wardrobe fitting. I was wearing pants a stylist chose for me that the world will never see.

Everyone has problems. The neighbor came over and told me his in laws are back again.
“He won’t shut the door when he takes a dump! My five year old knows to do that much.”
All we can do as good neighbors is listen. There’s no advice to give.
I’ve been a bit overwhelmed with this shop and the other work i do slowing down since January and my body rolling closer to 40.
It was nice then, tonite, when I got a call from a complete stranger by the name of George who wanted to tell me he’s been enjoying the website and thinks I’m lucky to have the opportunity to open a shop.
So thanks for the encouraging words George, and I’m gonna get back to writing something every day.

Hooray for the flea market

So here’s jimbo’s sign and my pile of garbage

Jimbo got a new hat. Don’t fit too well.

What is collectable? Is it something that triggers a memory of a certain time and place?

Or is it more than that? Do you see this Time magazine branded telephone? It feels like somewhere in the 1980′s, huh? Should I keep it? Should I put a price sticker on it and set it out in the shop?

If you answer yes to selling it, what price then? 3 dollars? How many months would you let it sit on a shelf before you gave up and threw it away? Or would you expect it to sell the first week?

Who on earth is dumb enough to open a junk store and try to answer these questions with every bit of junk that comes along? The task feels overwhelming right now and I’d like to get drunk and sleep under the counter.

What a depressing load of crap. Heating vent elbows. Orange lens gel. A cracked hi hat. Who volunteered me to shepard these derelict misfits to a new home?

Imagine loading a truck at 9 o’clock Saturday night just to wake at 5 am Sunday and head to the flea market? Who would pay 45$ to suffer the humiliation? Only a junk man. One who can’t let it go in the garbage. Only a man with hope in his heart. One who believes in second chances, do overs, resurrection, a treasure fallen far from the chest.

There’s a woman a few booths down and her voice carries.

“They sell him at Sotheby’s, very collectable. I paid 500$. I’m not making any money on this.”

Some people out here know something. A thing or two about this and that. More than that even. There are Ming dynasty pottery experts and oil can aficionados in the coffee and donut line clutching scores from the generalist who hauled some boxes from a storage unit.

But this pile of galvanized articulated tin furnace pipe joints won’t be rushed out to the trunk of the car and locked away securely should someone actually pay a few bits for it. They hand over the few crumpled bills and immediately regret it.

“What’ll I do with all this stuff? Make a robot? Will the robot work?”

The shaved head middle aged Black guy next to me has a rap-patter he’s laying on passersby.

“It’s going cheap, who’s next? Razzle dazzle dazzle dazzle!”

He has the same worries the rest of the vendors- “Who’s gonna make a lot of money off me? Did I sell too cheap? Was that a famous name on that painting? How much did I lose?”

Every sale is a loss for the guy if he puts his mind to it. In the end those of out here stay out here because we can shrug our shoulders and say, “oh well. At least I’m not taking it home again.”

If that’s enough for you, if that’s how high you raise the bar at 530 Sunday morning, you too can be a junk man. Or woman. There’s not enough old woman out here, unshaven, mad eyes with flashlights in the predawn.

An old guy showed up today in his gold Honda Accord from the ’80′s hoping to sell me a box of records, a coffee maker, a toaster or a slide projector.

“i dont have no rock n roll,” he tells me. Christmas albums, Montovani, 101 Strings, the same lp’s you find leftover in every record bin.

Still, having people arrive with a car of goodies is fun. It’s been a stressful time for me at the shop.

Oggy wrote me some encouraging words:

I wish you success in your business. Are you renting booth space at Mixed Nuts? I went to an antique mall/flea market and realized there are more people who will pay to let you not sell their trinkets than there are people who will actually buy your trinkets. And then you are making money doing nothing.

Oggy makes a good point. I’d mentioned to him if I couldn’t make rent I was going to turn the place into a metal detecting shop for the beach combers since we’re only 15 blocks from the beach. He replied:

Treasure hunting is definitely an under-served market. I’d like to tape a documentary of a treasure hunter looking for specific treasure. If you hear of a fanatic who has some insane inclination then I’ll get my crew together. I’m wandering the midwest and looking for work. I’d like to save enough money to retire in Mexico. S.F. might be on the route but unless there is a job offer on the table then I can’t afford the gas to cross the mountains. Missouri was the site of many Indian/pioneer battles and now it is home to frozen custard and the widest asses in America wheeling themselves through Target buying slave products from Vietnam and Golden Corral buffet for more asian stye spare ribs. I do not know if this is progress. I am disillusioned with the disparity between false advertised white tooth America and the slobbering transvaginal mesh class action lawsuit country that we really live in. But that will not stop me from writing my homeless manifesto –
live boldly as the bold live forever

With that this wandering legend signed off. It’s friends like this that remind me it doesn’t matter if this shop fails. If the effort I put into it is insane, it will be fun. It’s not that the shop looks good, but that I’m putting all I have into it.

We named the days of the weeks but could think only of seven that we use again and again so the years pile up like an insult to our intelligence. Only seven words to tick away the tragedies? Frankly it’s boring.

I’m bored all over. I can’t bring myself to type away one more time that I’ve been to the dump and the fog rolled through the neighborhood and the lady and I had a quarrel.

Let’s turn the other check and with our eyes looking in a new direction, who do we see?

Doug. Dr. Doogles. Pursuing an acting career simultaneous to a medical career where he puts the wheels back on miscarriages for unwed mothers.

How’s that for living? We met his mailman last week. The rocker. Doug sent along a band flyer the guy stuffed in among the utility bills.

That’s his mailman, both hands on a guitar. The young child to his left left looks much like Jason Boucher, a childhood friend, or a demon imp abducted from hell.

It feels foolish to write about my life anymore. I’m just a business man now. But Doug, he may keep my spirit alive. All of our spirits alive.

Slow down when you text your girlfriend asking to see her in fishnets. iPhone auto corrects fishnets to diarrhea.

We’re not close to Philly so this might take some explaining… the Vietnamese and the Chinese immigrants run the old 50′s diners in San Francisco and they offer pho – a broth soup with meat – and they sell Philly cheese steaks on the same menu.

Tonite we have a waitress who has not yet completely learned English, and if she has she has not yet come to understand the custom of cheese or sandwiches.

Trying to order a Philly cheese steak with chicken, not steak, becomes an exercise in circular logic.

I’d like a chicken cheese steak, I say.

You wan’ cheesesteaks or chicken sandwich? She asks.

Philadelphia style cheesesteak but with chicken, I reply.

Sorry. Sorry. One cheesesteak, one chicken?

Can anyone out there tell me the proper way to order this sandwich? Is it a Philly cheesechicken?

It will help that Jimbo goes to stores and buys things when we start pricing the items at the store. I’m wearing a dead man’s underwear. These sneakers I’m wearing, a close friend confided to me, look like an older woman’s work out shoes. I’m brushing my teeth with the half filled tube the section 8 folks left behind when they packed and moved in the night. There is no sense of value here. Doesn’t every one just wait till it comes down the waste stream?

Not Jimbo. He went to the Castro and got a homosexual to cut his hair and he paid $50 dollars. Looks like he’s rich. While he’s buying salon products to sculpt his hair I’m just not washing it for a day or so and wearing a hat so it’s more controllable. I should emphasize he went out and looked for a homosexual hairstylist. Dick’s International, where I head before going home for the holidays, charges 10 dollars and they finish with a handheld vibrator massage on your shoulders. Dick may be gay, but it isn’t part of the fee. Where does the extra $40 come in across town?

There are people out there who want to pay money for things. I know that. How much they will pay amazes and embarasses me. Jimbo gets it though. Some people have disposable income and don’t need to wait for a pair of shoes that fit to be thrown away before the corns will reside.

I’ll go as far as to say, “running a vintage retail shop is an ego trip.” I quoted myself on that. So why am I bringing someone along on an ego trip? I have a partner now. I’ve had a girlfriend for almost four years, but you’d never know it from this blog. You will, however, learn a lot about Jimbo.

Let’s assume he’s better at making money than me. He’s better at charging a fair price is more like it. He has more energy than I do. For the last two months I’ve needed a nap about 6 pm. And would you believe he doesn’t drink? That’s gonna save us thousands right there.

The shop is filling up with the stuff from my garage. It looks good. Old wooden benches, stools and boxes. Steel containers and tools. Old ropes, brass ornaments. That’s what the shop is about.

What will help us survive is that we are at the end of the earth in a small neighborhood full of working families. The dream is we become the neighborhood connection. The strength of my personality is that I like to introduce people. I keep a list in the back of my mind of who’s looking for what and like a living game of go fish I keep watching for the match. It might be people who need a plumber, a small wooden desk or someone to walk their dog. I feel the most important when I connect someone to what they need.

Otherwise, how can a junk shop survive? There’s a ton of free shit on the street corners.