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San
Louis Obispo
...bubble gum and beautiful bodies
California:
April, 1997
On a hot day, the stench in Bubble Gum Alley is pretty bad. How this smelly work of rebellion must rankle with the respectable inhabitants of St Louis Obispo, as they stroll healthily down its shady streets, expensive clothes moulding gently to the firm contours of beautiful bodies! How the joggers and power walkers must hold their breath as they pound past in their haut couture labia-hugging lycra!
This place drips money. There are no coloured people to be seen, other than those heading out of the tanning salons. There is none of the pale obesity of poverty. The shops are cool and collected. No tacky souvenir stores, but lots of lacy thingummyjigs, doilies and anti-macassars and (I would imagine) piano leg pants. No unwashed youths hang out beside the 7-11. Everyone has perfect skin, tanned uniformly as if they have been airbrushed using Photoshop. I guess that they buy their designer jeans ready-ripped if necessary.
I wish I had a tattoo, or was wearing something outrageous. It is just too nice here. I am glad that Lenore's cousin Tanya, who is showing us round, is suitably different.
According
to the City, Bubble Gum
Alley acquired its first dollop of pink goo not long after it was
constructed in the 1950s. The alley was cleaned twice during the 60s,
but the three-dimensional graffiti
returned undaunted, and the City gave in, reluctantly accepting the alley's
notoriety.
I like it. It is an affront to the empty smartness of the rest of the place. I love the fact that, in a small San Louis Obispo industrial estate, Tanya's company, Body Adornments is manufacturing piercing jewellery and leather sex toys so successfully that it has become the third largest operation of its size in the USA.
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