Underground Economies
Jun. 26th, 2003 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraI think I've become Heidi and Bill's latest charity project. An odd feeling.
Saturday night we all went out with Paul Montgomery, the drummer from Satellite Cowboys. Paul's a very engaging guy, he can spiel off whole passages from Glengarry Glen Ross, Repo Man and The Wild One, three of my favorite movies. Naturally, I was delighted with him. We were eating at my favorite lunchtime hangout, The Bistro, which in the evenings turns into a rather upscale dinner establishment. Bill slapped my hand when I reached for the bill. "My treat."
This made me uncomfortable. The tab was pretty high. But it is true that Ben has spent untold hours coaxing Bill's computer back to life after multiple crashes. Maybe this was the turnabout that's always fair play.
So yesterday evening I bump into Heidi and Bill as I'm out walking the dog. Every summer, Monterey goes through a spate of unseasonably hot days and we're in the middle of one now. Temperatures soar towards the high nineties. Evenings provide little relief: the Old Town is pretty in the golden light, but you could turn into beef jerky by the time you round the next corner.
The sidewalk is so hot that poor Xena is resisting being dragged up Spaghetti hill. And I'm alternately cursing at her out of the corner of my mouth and calculating profit margins and cash flows. The fine commercial real estate people at Cannery Row Properties want to rent me a space that's 800 square feet and $4 K a month. But I don't want a space that's 800 square feet and 4 K a month. Light My Fire, the ur-hot sauce store in the LA Fairfax Farmers Market is only 200 square feet, perfect size for this kind of retail venture seems to me – standing shelves on all sides, very little room to walk, a womb! Like being inside a dollhouse. In comparison, the San Diego store spread out its merchandise over several hundred more feet and the effect was bedraggled somehow, staged. Didn't make me want to buy.
So caught up in retail empire building am I that I don't recognize the blonde woman and the Hank Hill look-alike struggling up the hill in the wake of a merry crowd of DLI refugees.
"Patrizia!" says a voice, and it scares me.
Heidi fixing me with those unnerving blue eyes.
"Sorry, deep in entrepreneurial fugue state," I explain.
"Wanna be my date for the Blues Festival this weekend?"
"Sure," I say, blinking at Bill. "But are you sure you couldn't get a better offer?"
"My husband is otherwise disposed," she says. To cut his own down start-up costs at the hot tub store, Bill is being the Man Behind the Counter eight hours a day, six days a week.
"Well, that sounds like fun," I say. "How much are the tickets?"
Heidi and Bill exchange A Look.
"Oh, I already have the tickets," says Heidi, holding up a hand as if to ward off bad voodoo spirits.
"But they're expensive," I protest. Weakly.
"Your money's no good here," says Bill. Which, of course, is Lloyd the Bartender's big line in The Shining.
Jesus, I think. Do people really think I'm in that bad shape? Plucky frontier widder lady fighting tooth and nail to keep the ranch?
Apparently so.
Maybe I'm in worst shape than I thought. Got a long, sympathetic email from someone on the Well the other day apologizing for reading this online journal and concluding, "I am very sorry to learn of your financial difficulties. I wish you the best, and hope that you will find a way to avoid that cardboard box."
Very sweet letter but it kind of freaked me out.
And Janie has been calling or sending wacky postcards every day. The post cards are like those wacky white-board brainstorming sessions we used to do in the ICM-Breakpoint boardroom, single words in thought balloons connected by dashed arrows with lots of mathematical symbols. They always conclude, "How brave you are, Patty!"
Brave? Me?
Next thing you know Jerry Lewis will be staging a telethon. Maybe I can stave off my guilt by cooking Bill and Heidi and elaborate meal – Florentine chicken, risotto and a huge, rich chocolate cake. The new underground economy is barter.
Saturday night we all went out with Paul Montgomery, the drummer from Satellite Cowboys. Paul's a very engaging guy, he can spiel off whole passages from Glengarry Glen Ross, Repo Man and The Wild One, three of my favorite movies. Naturally, I was delighted with him. We were eating at my favorite lunchtime hangout, The Bistro, which in the evenings turns into a rather upscale dinner establishment. Bill slapped my hand when I reached for the bill. "My treat."
This made me uncomfortable. The tab was pretty high. But it is true that Ben has spent untold hours coaxing Bill's computer back to life after multiple crashes. Maybe this was the turnabout that's always fair play.
So yesterday evening I bump into Heidi and Bill as I'm out walking the dog. Every summer, Monterey goes through a spate of unseasonably hot days and we're in the middle of one now. Temperatures soar towards the high nineties. Evenings provide little relief: the Old Town is pretty in the golden light, but you could turn into beef jerky by the time you round the next corner.
The sidewalk is so hot that poor Xena is resisting being dragged up Spaghetti hill. And I'm alternately cursing at her out of the corner of my mouth and calculating profit margins and cash flows. The fine commercial real estate people at Cannery Row Properties want to rent me a space that's 800 square feet and $4 K a month. But I don't want a space that's 800 square feet and 4 K a month. Light My Fire, the ur-hot sauce store in the LA Fairfax Farmers Market is only 200 square feet, perfect size for this kind of retail venture seems to me – standing shelves on all sides, very little room to walk, a womb! Like being inside a dollhouse. In comparison, the San Diego store spread out its merchandise over several hundred more feet and the effect was bedraggled somehow, staged. Didn't make me want to buy.So caught up in retail empire building am I that I don't recognize the blonde woman and the Hank Hill look-alike struggling up the hill in the wake of a merry crowd of DLI refugees.
"Patrizia!" says a voice, and it scares me.
Heidi fixing me with those unnerving blue eyes.
"Sorry, deep in entrepreneurial fugue state," I explain.
"Wanna be my date for the Blues Festival this weekend?"
"Sure," I say, blinking at Bill. "But are you sure you couldn't get a better offer?"
"My husband is otherwise disposed," she says. To cut his own down start-up costs at the hot tub store, Bill is being the Man Behind the Counter eight hours a day, six days a week.
"Well, that sounds like fun," I say. "How much are the tickets?"
Heidi and Bill exchange A Look.
"Oh, I already have the tickets," says Heidi, holding up a hand as if to ward off bad voodoo spirits.
"But they're expensive," I protest. Weakly.
"Your money's no good here," says Bill. Which, of course, is Lloyd the Bartender's big line in The Shining.
Jesus, I think. Do people really think I'm in that bad shape? Plucky frontier widder lady fighting tooth and nail to keep the ranch?
Apparently so.
Maybe I'm in worst shape than I thought. Got a long, sympathetic email from someone on the Well the other day apologizing for reading this online journal and concluding, "I am very sorry to learn of your financial difficulties. I wish you the best, and hope that you will find a way to avoid that cardboard box."
Very sweet letter but it kind of freaked me out.
And Janie has been calling or sending wacky postcards every day. The post cards are like those wacky white-board brainstorming sessions we used to do in the ICM-Breakpoint boardroom, single words in thought balloons connected by dashed arrows with lots of mathematical symbols. They always conclude, "How brave you are, Patty!"
Brave? Me?
Next thing you know Jerry Lewis will be staging a telethon. Maybe I can stave off my guilt by cooking Bill and Heidi and elaborate meal – Florentine chicken, risotto and a huge, rich chocolate cake. The new underground economy is barter.
