Art gallery owners are almost always intellectuals. Now that's not to say that they're especially smart, or financially acute necessarily, but they knew things.
These owners knew that although they didn't have liquor licenses, so long as they didn't actually sell any of the beer or the wine, they could serve it all night long. Money's a funny thing in the art world.
You walk down the boardwalk, you'll see some art going for $20, $60 maybe; this hastily painted used skateboard deck for $30, this mask hand-carved with a hammer and chisel by a perpetually stoned Jamaican brother, carved from palm fronds that he fines on the beach in the morning, $50. He sits there under his easy up all day, hammering away, and singing. He's got a stiff accent in his style and in the way he talks to you in a passionate ganja stone.
Farther down the boardwalk there's a real painter. A quiet hunched over fellow with dark skin with a shine on it and creases at the ends of his soft smile and his squinty eyes. The painter works under a wide umbrella. I've only ever seen him paint big canvases, painting with sliver brushes and a pipe leaned against his easel (or was in on the canvas itself) as a guide. His pieces were at the same time detailed and meticulous, Caribbean realism with a lovely taste for scale in large environments. Also, he always played old jazz records while he painted, and although he hunched, his chin was always held high; even when he looked down at his paints.
His canvases, big 5x5's, he would price at $2000. Seeing him, I think, was the first time I really craved disposable income. That being said, the only reason I ever went to an art show on Abbot Kinney was for the free beer.
ENDLESS WINTER = INVIERNO SIN FIN
It's Claire's birthday today. Biking home, it occurred to me; I need to start writing again. What a shame it is really that the first thought in my head is one of dear old Abbot Kinney. Gone are the art galleries and the free booze - the free beer and the wine because art galleries don't have liquor licenses, so they can't sell alcohol.
Ray, she's married.
