Home Obnoxious Home

so, there's this new blog/photo/thing.....you take a pic from your past and go back and take the same pic again.....Dear Photograph.
Oh how much has changed.....Yes, you can go home again...but it always hurts. (meaning "pain, ache")
This is why we call it Nostalgia ---
from the wiki entry --
The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), meaning "returning home", a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning "pain, ache". It was described as a medical condition, a form of melancholy, in the Early Modern period, and came to be an important topic in Romanticism.^[1]

Definition of NOSTALGIA

1
the state of being homesick : homesickness

2

: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition; also : something that evokes nostalgia

— nos·tal·gic adjective or noun

— nos·tal·gi·cal·ly adverb

— nos·tal·gist noun
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Let's Play.....Here's my mom and dad, me, Jan, and Fritzi in mom's backyard at 2020 Monroe St, Yountville, on Easter 1973.
Simple. Poverty Acres. Somethings to sit on. A barbeque. Quiet. Trees. Weeds. Affordable for the working class.

 

yeah, I'm 19. Notice the little locket on a chain.And the authentic buffalo toe sandals from India. My mom's Keds, and my dad's hippie watchband. Jan's cuteness speaks for itself !

so, then my mom was taken by my sister. Then my sister, her MBA son, and blonde daughter owned the house (surprise!) and then some bigger douchebags bought my moms house and built this....
The furniture on the left side is about where my mom is sitting. Dad is sitting near the open doorway. Jan and I are behind the fountain. (scoot us all backwards a bit)

The "casita" on the left is the size of the house my mom lived in.........the abortion on the right side is about 2700 sq ft. The Real Estate listing  says "The stone walled courtyard, fountain, outdoor kitchen, fireplace & saline water lap pool are ingredients for the good-life."
The Good Life , asshole rich people, is to care about your Carbon Footprint. And Not taking up the same amount of resources of a small African country. For the rich to bastardize Aristotle's, and Helen and Scott Nearing's simple meaningful life philosophy....Is more than sickening...it proves the rich are both illiterate and uneducated in the Classics.

It sold eventually for about a million & a half dollars. Asshole douchebags have this Much Money because they slashed your job, lowered your wages, and denied your right to organize for higher wages, so they have 98% of our money. And this is what they do with it. They build grotesque mausoleums to their banality and lack of care for anyone but themselves. Narcissism. It's the Disease of the Moment.
"Narcissism is the personality trait of egotism, vanity, conceit, or simple selfishness. Applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others."
Yeah, Dear Photograph, going back is gonna hurt. 
But think of the material I get to work with when I move back home....to the Napa Valley. 

Raw thoughts on a childhood haunt.....

The Fagiani bar in Napa will reopen and it will retain the ugly blue and burgundy tiles that were applied in the 40s, to a 1910 building.
My whole life is about preservation of that which has come before...I like today and tomorrow just fine...but I have spent my entire existence acquiring bits of this and that, and vast knowledge of old tomatoes, old furniture, old buildings, old paint, old wallpaper, old crap ...good and bad, and of course.... old clothes...old memories

Wow, what an incredible soap opera has happened over this.....
Bought by Steve Hasty a few years ago, he has lost the money and found the money to remodel and open it as a bar and restaurant again...(the economy is such a dream-killer).


This bar is 2 doors down from the Asia Cafe, where my parents and I went to dinner many many many nights of my childhood. Sick green walls, musty old varnished wood, each booth had a chrome hat rack standing ready. Great Chinese/American/Chinesey food, hot tea, and Eddie's mom, Mary Berengue was the waitress. Dum Dum candy pops after dinner served in the same little monkey bowl as the stale fortune cookies, with fortunes that never really told me which path was my real destiny.
Yes it was paradise. See the pic of the sign at the bottom.

The Fagiani family were politicians and friends with my mom and dad. My parents also were politicians and they were also bar and restaurant owners. My mom's bar , Lomita's Red Front, is now Bouchon Restaurant.

 yes...this bar....tattooed on my arm..

Fagiani’s bar was closed in 1976 by Muriel Fagiani after her sister’s homicide in the bar, and it became a time capsule.
The beer stayed in the cooler.....the electricity stayed on...telephone bill was paid for 3+ decades and still rang when Hasty bought it. After he bought the bar, the sister's murderer was found, and is in a trial right now. Clicky here for that story.
You can't make this shit up.
Well, you can, But I didn't. It happened when I was pregnant with Shayne and it haunted me too. A murder. In a place I knew intimately with the gossamer of time.

Over the years since I lived there, Napa has licked the boot heels of the rich, trading on its proximity to wine.
This makes me roll my eyes since Napa (like Tacoma) has always been working class. Why be ashamed of working? It seems that every city in America can't figure out that
is the heart and soul of a city...that which gives it Authenticity.

Hasty plans to reopen the bar and create a restaurant for the second and third floors. First the Napa Planning Commission rejected Hasty’s plan to keep the tiles because fancy-pants experts said it was wrong wrong and wrong. And they were right. Those tiles are uggggly.

So What. Here's the quote from the Napa Register,"Addressing the city council Tuesday, architectural historian Caitlin Harvey — who submitted a report about the project to the council — said Hasty’s varying design elements are integrated properly in the design plans. The building’s blend of styles is unique, she said. "
Ms. Harvey is channeling my soul.....as does..."Cindy Heitzman, a former Napa County Landmarks president who has served on several preservation boards, said Hasty’s project — keeping the building largely as is — retains the building’s historical value. The Fagiani tiles, she said, “tell a story of a period in time” and contribute to the building’s character, and reflect part of Napa’s history.“It’s not a beauty contest. ... this building tells a story,” she told councilmembers."

"Councilmember Peter Mott said the Fagiani building reflects Napa’s past as a blue collar, post-war town. "

another quote , "Page & Turnbull, a San Francisco architectural firm, also asserted that overall, the building’s design elements complement each other. "

This, folks, is how it's done. So what ...ugly is as ugly does. It tells a story. Here in Tacoma, at breakneck speed, so many old buildings and neighborhoods are disrespected and disrupted for the Flavor Of The Decade.
Copycat towns and cities are the Real ugly. Character people !! Reality !! Get Me Real.
So happy that the bar my parents would secret me in when I was a youngin' so they could have a belt for the road, after dinner at the Asia Cafe.....is gonna live again.
A tiny piece of my childhood is saved from stupid capitalists.....

 photos stolen from The Napa Register. so sue me.
 photo of Asia Cafe sign from athena glow on flickr

Napa's Beringer Vineyard in paper

Loving all things My Hometown......this is crafty...and oh my!
Look... is that a little paper Mexican illegal immigrant picking the grapes to help make the wine that makes other people rich?



the linky is here

Tall, Blonde, Slim & Has Straight White Teeth

Maybe I'm just goofy, and I probably am.....but the world needs more Originals......
and that is the premise behind funkoma vintage.....Dressing and living as an original person...rather than mindlessly traipsing thru the mall...
Because wearing vintage and decorating your home and style with the good stuff from the years past takes some brainpower.....
If it was great back then, it still is now.....style recycle.


Since Twiggy, from my Seventeen magazine-reading days, uh, back in the 60s.....and my lust for the 70s Lauren Hutton....here with Dennis Hopper...

(remind me to tell you my Dennis Hopper story.....)

I haven't desired to look like anyone else on the planet....not that I'm so cute....it's just that I like to do my own thing and since plastic surgery is never gonna be in my budget....well, I've had to spend my time Just Be'n ME !
There is one gal, however that really makes me happy.....
Yes I am a Chloe-Girl...Sevigny, that is....

from fashionista.com is the Early Chloe....Great fashion sense...and there's the reason why I love her.....even though
she's Tall, Blonde, Slim & Has Straight White Teeth...(which makes life easier...)
She seems so "normal"..like if you saw her in the grocery store she'd say Hi! (if you didn't act like a big goober) and mush and lush all over her...which would turn anyone off, or should....