BRIDESHEAD & BUTTON-DOWNS: MY LA ADVENTURE


- Nicola Giacomo A.G. Linza, Contributing Life & Style Writer

As an architectural theorist who happens to be an environmental scientist, I find that “environment” is a hot topic all around lately, both in architecture as well as in psychology. Since "environment" can mean many things in the human experience, I want to focus on these different kinds of environments and meanings of "environmental community" than I have in previous blogs. These are still about structures, in a way: they are like the unique interrelationships between people, and we have to remember that a personal environment is one that is "built." It really is all about finding one's true place at a given time.

An anecdote that illustrates this comes from when I moved to Southern California as a teenager. Believe me, it was not easy. I entered the homeland of "trendy" as an old-fashioned young man from an east coast school, using the English shortened version of my very long Italian name. I went to school dressed in tweed jackets, navy blue blazers and flannels. You get the picture, right? An oddity, for sure, in the mist of the raging California surf culture. During  those early days, I had very few friends. OK ... to be exact, I had NO friends. All my friends were either back east or in Europe.

However, a few years into my exile out there, my personal environment expanded. I made my first real friend in college. It was my birthday, and a guy named Matt from class who didn't know me that well, called my house and demanded that we go out on the town. Matt was also an east coast boy (from Boston), living by then for many years with his family in Bel Air. Tall and blond, to me he rather had the whole "California thing" down. Boy, oh boy, did he set me straight that night about the insane "LA environment!" After over three miserable years out there, I had found a good friend I could relate to, (we are still friends to this day), and thanks to Matt, I learned how to get along with "those people." He made perfectly clear to me that, "If you want to get along out here, always remember that you aren't in Boston or New York." I knew what he meant, and since he was the first real friend I'd had in years, I listened.

Then my psychological environment expanded. I went on to more schooling, slowly started going out and doing things where I actually met people. I was soon to meet the one person who would become my brotherly alter-ego and sidekick for years. It was one of those "Oh, do I have to introduce you to ..." deals in a very trendy nightclub of all places. It was a freakish meeting. This new "introduction" was to a guy who was in essence a younger, blond version of me in every way -- height, style, tastes, the whole nine yards, right down to our 12-inch shoes. My personal and social environments significantly expanded that night ... , we hit it off like wildfire.

It was as if we had known each other all our lives. We became inseparable. B had a slick, charming, English-American manner about him and he would be my comrade throughout my youthful Los Angeles "guy adventure." I refer to him simply as B, which was for "Browser," a play on "brother," as everyone thought we really were brothers (something we seriously abused in school.) when we first came up with "B," we thought it would be a great name for a men's store. We never opened the store, but started using the nickname for each other. Little did we know then that our nickname would become an Internet term! He was another tweed-obsessed, custom-shoe-addicted, overcoat-wearing, sort-of-edgy, "Young Fogey" (as opposed to "Old Fogey."). While people had said my personality reminded them of a cross between Daniel Day-Lewis and Rupert Everett, B was then a cross between Rupert Everett and Julian Sands. Our new-found friendship consisted of shops, old books, clothes, food haunts, fine liquor, classical music, films, girls, etc. It was, if I may use some poetic license, like a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Château Peyraguey -- you get the picture. We sat too many nights drinking claret, reading (The Portrait of Dorian Gray, The Talented Mr. Ripley, etc.) and we watched the BBC version of Brideshead Revisited. Yes, I guess the term "Fogey" fit us well.
It was easier then, too. I have to clarify something: this time really marked the end of a Los Angeles that no longer exists. Ours was a self-created guy’s wonder world within the town known for creating films about just such things. B was a real decadent soul; it was part of his never-ending charm. We both took an obscene level of youthful pride in our appearances. He looked up to me as a brother, and I was fearless and wide open to pumping big adventure. I am a sportsman, a marksman and a well-known swordsman in long-blade Italian Rapier Combat. I was a bit intense and when all hell broke loose, I think I scared people, but as any good fanatic, I knew my limits. I belonged to The Los Angeles Athletic Club. (Yes, it was worth the trip downtown -- hey, Brooks Brothers was there and I had an account!) B and I simply looked as though we were from another era. We looked good together, which was great for attracting girls -- alas, as well as LA crackpots. We were both tall and well built, and subsequently hounded to model; each photographer claimed we looked like old movie stars, whatever that meant. (We were fond of old films and never idolized any modern figures -- we both thought James Dean was the ideal of cool.) B surprised me one Christmas with a Sid Avery contact sheet of James Dean in "Giant" that hangs on my office wall to this day.

Our environment took on a dreamy quality and we spent our days and nights defining and refining our style and seeking pleasure, restaurants, nightclubs, underground clubs, antiques and hunting; top-drawer oddities were tops on our priority list. I had a strong gut feeling that halcyon days were upon us.

We would hunt for overcoats from thrift stores in Venice Beach (they had all the unworn, high quality, East Coast leftovers that no trendy Southern Californian would be caught dead in, but probably bought on a trip to New York or London and wore once.) We got to know about other old-school shops like the old Bullocks Wilshire and I. Magnin stores, those architectural masterpieces on Wilshire Boulevard -- two beautifully-built retail environments, primarily for the Fremont Place and Hancock Park crowds. It was an architectural adventure just going there.

Beverly Hills also had some spots for two sophisticated guys. On the wild side, Fiorucci was worth the trip, if just for visual impact. Melrose Avenue had nothing but a few blocks of alternative stores at the time, but at least they were honest and still non-commercial. The old Abercrombie and Fitch on Wilshire Boulevard (long before they sold out to mass culture)  was a true Trad heaven -- the kind of place where we could buy anything exotic, from hunting gear for trips to Africa to saddles for our horses. I even bought a limited edition, signed, hand-carved decoy duck there for an insane amount of money -- further proof to the LA crowd that I was a bit "off."

Los Angeles could be a fun place then, especially if one felt "stuck" in Southern California. Rodeo Drive had not yet sold itself out. We would go to the coffee shop at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel (it's now gone), shop at Tiffany & Co. at one end of the building, head to the other side of the building and cross the street to the great Italian Palazzo-style Bonwit Teller store where Hildich and Key had their own department. Then we would cross Wilshire Boulevard and head up Rodeo Drive to go to the huge Hunter's bookstore at Rodeo and Santa Monica Boulevard. Afterwards, we would cross the street and walk straight into the venerable brick Carroll and Co. -- very dangerous territory for both of us. Carroll and Co. pandered to the "Brideshead" crowd, and my family had an account there, also. There was an honest charm to Beverly Hills then, as a small community akin to a village, but the entire Los Angeles environment was soon to change.

The new music scene, punk of the late '70s and early '80s, gave way to the English invasion of New Romantic, and we were suddenly gifted improvisers. We created stylish alter egos and started crossing our routine button-downs and Gucci loafers in a "presto-chango" kind of move to transform into black-clad hipster characters in the underground. We were in the center of it all, at clubs, art openings and throughout this new, bizarre scene. We were very young, well-dressed and good-looking, and taking a walk on the wild side with the means to justify it. We easily hooked up with models, were invited to A-list events, major openings and received straight A grades while doing so. It was so very easy that we thought to ourselves, "could these people be this stupid?" Yes, they could, and were. The key was simply that the more we listened to their "West Coast conceptual psycho-babble," the higher we seemed to climb the trendy social ladder. People love to be agreed with, and to us it was just a big psychological game, which soon started boring me to death. It went on and on, until one day I noticed things were slipping away, and we were heading into a place I did not want to go, and where we did not belong. We weren't being ourselves anymore.

We had no more time for fun and games. Although we were still in school, I had my first offer to work in a very important job in architecture. I felt I had to put a stop to this; what we were into was getting dangerous. And so, as fast as we had met, B and I sadly went our separate ways. It was as if the entire thing had been a dream, and I have always missed that time I spent with B ... it was one of the best times of my life.

Yes, LA is a very weird place like that. People come and go. It can wind up having a strange impact on people and their overall environments. There are lessons to be learned in this, that all surroundings, events and people in our lives are tailor-made for spiritual growth. I have learned to enjoy the quality of life, as it presents itself. To work against one's grain to be "accepted," or to become a part of something "new" (which is something frankly I never wanted to begin with) is sheer crazy-making. I have often felt conflicted (or, horrified) by trends, anyway. The insane search for the short-lived acceptance that accompanies trends is simply not a sustainable way of life, nor is it emotionally healthy. To be trendy or feel a need for acceptance where idiots agree with anything you say or do, is ridiculous, and no one should have to live that way. Remember the coolest kid in high school? The one who was so into him/herself, without any real concern for others? Those "trendsetters" usually turned out dumb as doornails, and years later, if you have the chance to run into one of those "cool kids" from high school, they have always turned out to be ... well, you know.

photo credit:  Carlos Reynosa

OK I could go on, but I do not feel the need. Is there a moral to this story? I hope so. What I have learned, reflecting back on those days, is that when one comes to the truth with oneself, one sheds the weight of always seeking or trying to feel complete and
accepted. In other words, one is no longer a soul searching for that new thing -- "new" no longer matters. Quality is what matters, in all things. We have all been down that road, at one time or another; it is the human condition. This journey should be a personal search for establishing an unbroken chain of quality in our life’s environments. I say, value what is valuable and support that which is of quality -- in all environments.