Cynematik • Cyndi Greening

My friend from Tucson has been encouraging me to take a few days and do something fun. So, we spent a long weekend in Los Angeles goofing off. As always, it was nice to get away. It rained most of the day Friday and was quite chilly on Saturday and Sunday but, from what I hear, it was a whole lot better than the weekend in Phoenix. In addition to a sojourn in Santa Monica, we went to the Getty on Saturday morning and spent Saturday evening at the Griffith Observatory. Going to Griffith after dark was just awesome. We went up to the roof to gaze out the telescope. Docents had set up three telescopes on the front lawn so we could look at Mars, the Orion Nebula and the Andromeda cluster. The exhibits were interesting but the actual sky is always much more captivating. Elisa was also excited to be seeing the shooting location for the key scenes in James Dean’s REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE.

On Thursday and Sunday we went to the Farmer’s Market because we found a fun shop. The Shine Gallery is full of vintage memorabilia. Apparently the owner goes around buying up the contents of old warehouses, factories and closed stores. You never quite know what you’re going to find in the shop because it’s largely dependent on what happens to have been left behind. There were magic tricks that I recalled paying 10¢ for as a child, bakelite dice, cap guns, water pistols and police badges. There were old political pins, banners from sporting events, dangerous toys that would be banned in a matter of seconds and politically-inappropriate trinkets. Elisa was captivated with the Circus Dexterity Puzzles (plastic circle with three little BBs that you have to get into the clown’s eyes or whatever). I settled on the Green Dice and a few other cools things that shall remain unmentioned until after the holidays. If you find anything for the BabyBoomer on your Christmas List, The Shine Gallery does ship.