Hollywood Geetahrs

(click pic above to see a Sunset Blvd Geetahr store)
(click pic below for Ranger Mike footage)



"Friendship multiplies blessings and ... southes the soul." ---Baltasar Gracian



"Cain't have enough geetahrs in yer homeless shelter room, even if'n ya hafta move yer bed out ta make room!" ---Ranger Mike

Ranger Mike, Gordon The Hollywood Anarchist and I decided to go to Hollywood last night. Gordon and I were going to see a movie, any movie, anything to get away for a while from the homeless veterans shelter we were living in.

My homeless veterans shelter roommate Ranger Mike just wanted a ride up to the guitar store on Sunset Boulevard. He needed to buy a hundred and fifty dollar foot pedal (he gets it for $39.95, homeless or not, because he is a card-carrying professional musician).

Mike needed the foot pedal for the sound stage he's building in our little homeless shelter dorm room.

So far, Ranger Mike has two electric guitars, one acoustic guitar, a singer's microphone on a stand---like you see standup comics use---and a boombox wired to plug into both the mike and the guitar so Mike can sing along with his favorite country and western CD . . . causing excruciating pain in my left inner ear.

The foot pedal will give him "Wa Wa" capability, whatever that is.

Gordon and I were lost in the 'geetahr' store on Sunset. All the 'geetahrs' and gimcracks and electronic gumwhatzits had us completely bumfuzzled. We couldn't tell the difference between the $25,000 guitars and the ones on sale for $299. They all looked the same to us, but Ranger Mike knew the difference.

The place looked like a giant bait and tackle shop to me. Maybe it was all the guitars hung on the walls all the way up to the ceiling like fish trophies. Maybe it was the wooden-planked stage that reminded me of a boat dock at Caddo Lake. Maybe it was all the stacked amplifier boxes looking like tackle boxes for the Moby Dick crew.

I don't know. All I know is that I kept expecting a salesperson to come up to me and start talking about fishin'. Or music. Or music and fishin'. Or musical fish.

Downstairs were the acoustic and electric mandolins. I never knew there was such a thing as an electrimical mandolin. Imagine that. Upstairs was the glass vacuum tube section . . . vacuum tubes like those old timey radios or those old room-sized Brainiac 1000 mainframe computers used to use.

Don't ask me what vacuum tubes have to do with music. I haven't a clue and didn't ask. I was afraid it might have something to do with musical fish and I wasn't ready to deal with that right now.

To the left in an alcove room was a rock and roll museum and gift shop, emphasis on the tourist tee shirts for sale. The disinterested teenager resting on the cash register didn't know who the pictures on the wall depicted. Buncha singers or something.

There were plaqued handprints in the cement at the guitar store entrance just like at Mann's Chinese Theater. Buncha singers or something.

Ranger Mike was running around the store wide-eyed and excited, like Squarepants Bob or a kid in a toy store at Christmas time looking at all the sparkly Christmas displays, so Gordon and I walked across the street to a familiar crack motel we both knew and bought a couple of cokes from the vending machine there.

"They've really let this place go (downhill) since they swept all the crack dealers out," Gordon lamented about the motel, "Now that they're gone, (motel) management doesn't have to keep up the pretense of respectability."

"Yeah," I said, "(It's a) shame."

END PART ONE

Tags: Hollywood, guitar, guitars, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Veteran Affairs, V.A., veterans administration, Westside Residence Hall, U.S. Vets, homeless veterans shelter, homeless shelter, Sunset Blvd Guitar, Sunset Boulevard, Baltasar Gracian, Gordon The Hollywood Anarchist, Hollywood anarchist, professional musician, foot pedal, electric guitars, acoustic guitar, boombox, shelter dorm, wa-wa, gimcracks, gumwahtzit, bumfuzzled, bait and tackle, boat dock, Caddo Lake, amplifier, Moby Dick, musical fish, rock and roll museum, Mann's Chinese Theater, Squarepants Bob, crack motel, crack dealers, pretense of respectability, vlog, vlogging, funny videos, vlogger, videophile, videologist, factotum