Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Days of Pant Past

Hollywood Boulevard at Whitley, 1986

Occasionally I like to look back at my neighborhood, to the days when Fashion was available...at a price. Not at a "discount", oh no, but for a price, and that price was a human life. It's just as well the the joint next door was called "Reflections", because it behooved the prospective shopper to pause and consider: Would you kill for a fashionable pant? Granted, it was the Reagan Administration, and human life was cheap, nevertheless, what profit a man to gain the latest Pant, and lose his immortal soul? But that was the Boulevard in the mid-80s, when many a wide-eyed innocent breezed into the Pant Station, only to emerge a different person. A person who has not only bought a spectacularly fashionable Stretch-Stirrup or Parachute Pant, but has also faced the fact that -- like John Huston in Chinatown -- at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything.

3 comments:

M. Bouffant said...

J.J. Newberry. I'd forgotten that. Used to be an F.W. Woolworth on the Blvd. too.

Remember Grand Central Pants, formerly on the northeast corner of Hollywood & Western, in the space now occupied by a Starbucks?

Scott said...

I don't recollect Grand Central Pants, but I do recall the Woolworths, now that you've jogged my memory. My favorite thing on the Boulevard was always, and will probably forever be, Pickwick Books.

M. Bouffant said...

I thought your photo might be the Pickwick bldg., until I took a closer look.

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