Ok...I promised a post about my honeypot a few weeks back. This is it. I’m not sure what is going to come out of my brain anymore. My thoughts are tangent and random these days.

I am composed of...and I operate from… a gene pool of hearty German stock…a heritage of devote Christian farmers and engineers with their feet firmly planted in the elements of Germany, Tennessee, and Georgia and with their souls reaching ever upward to heaven.

I suppose that it is this why I process things and behave the way I do…even if my methods and perspectives seem different from my cultural folklore.

So anyway...Marc and I decided to spend the day today checking out the competition here in Atlanta. We visited all the stores that are similar to Heliotrope in the metro area…stores that offer an experience similar to ours…great furniture, unique accessories, fun merchandising, exciting visual displays, etc.

I’m extremely glad we did that today. I came back with a whole new admiration and appreciation for what we have accomplished with Heliotrope.

I have a fresh perspective and a renewed excitement about what we have created with our store. One of the main tick points as we were writing our business plan was to…

...establish a “Culture of Yes”. We vowed early on, to create a shopping atmosphere that would be filled with positive experience and fun. We saw so many examples of negativity in other stores today. “No pets allowed” signs. “Do not touch this or that” signs. “No refunds” signs. “Don’t fucking even think about this or that” kind of signs.

Ridiculous. In our store, we welcome customers like they are guests in our home and I want every person that walks into our store to feel comfortable, entertained, and intrigued. I want our customers to spend hours lounging on our sofas flipping through our books. I want our customers to bring in their dogs and feel like they are at home. After all, Heliotrope IS our home. Hell, I spend way more time there than I do at my little bungalow on Meridian Street.

I was getting increasingly more proud of our store as we toured all the others today. It made me feel good. It made me feel that all the thought and work and blood and sweat and tears we put into Heliotrope really is worth it. (Can I say this without sounding like I am bragging?....We smoke our competition!!!)

Decatur Living did a very nice and applauding half page spread on us this month. Atlanta Magazine and Lucky Magazine came in to interview Marc and me and to photograph the store for articles in their April issues.

Our website is already cranking after only 22 days up. We’ve even had orders from the UK and Germany. Damn. Amazing. The website is my baby now. If I’m not at the store, I’m messing around with the website nowadays.

Am I bragging? Fuck yes I am bragging. I’m bragging because I finally get to. I’m bragging because I have put in my dues and because decades of following in the footsteps and living by the examples of my hard working forebears have paid off for me.

I came to Atlanta penniless ten years ago. My monthly debts exceeded my income by a huge percentage. I had sold all my furniture and household goods to pay off my credit cards and I was living in the guest bedroom of a friend. When I made enough money to afford my own apartment, I lived off of 50 cent generic tuna and 50 cent generic macaroni and cheese for months. I flirted with guys at The Eagle so I could drink free beer every night.

My life 10 years ago is like a dime store novel to me now. When I wasn’t trying to eat on $1 a day or flirting with guys to get free beer and well…you know, I was researching trade magazines, watching the buying habits of Virginia Highlands customers, networking and gossiping with all the high profile designers I was meeting in my business…and generally being a big ol’ bohemian mess.

I used to play a Nina Simone CD from the Virginia Highlands store over and over when I was in my cramped office there under the stairs of the store, re-working and re-rehashing a project at 5am because I didn’t want to go home. “Lilac Wine”, “Wild is the Wind”, and her cover of “Here Comes the Sun” were my best friends all those 5pms back then.

That was then…this is now. My honeypot. Funny how shit can happen, huh?

Good grief.

Thinking back, I suppose that there were clues that I was always totally, inevitably, undeniably, and at least within a 98 to 99 percentile likelihood range… a gay kid.

Clue #1…I went OFF on my friend Suzanne for forgetting to draw a purse on her stick figure mother when we were in kindergarten.

Clue #2…I was repulsed and enraged in the first grade by the other kids that didn’t keep their supplies neat in their pencil boxes.

Clue #3…My mother took me to try on Cub Scout uniforms at Loveman’s Department Store; but instead, I kept trying on the purple bellbottoms and Neru shirts because that’s what I wanted to wear when me and Davy Jones from the Monkees got married and moved to Acapulco. Acapulco was where all the big winners on Let’s Make a Deal got to go, so I just knew that was the place where me and Davy Jones would inevitably take up residence. I was 8.

Clue #4…My friends and I were watching Batman. They were swinging on ropes that they had tied from trees like Batman and Robin. I was practicing pronouncing my rolling “r”s like Cat Woman did. I wanted my rolling “r”s to be purrrrrfect.

Clue #5…I got two hamsters for my 10th birthday. I named them Judy Garland and Gloria Swanson. They were boy hamsters.

Clue #6…The first album I bought with my own allowance when I was 11 was a Bette Midler album. I can still sing this song from that album...verbatim!





T

In 1979, the FCC mandated that top cable TV markets set aside a 24 hour channel for public access. Anyone was allowed a slot of time to televise whatever they wanted to, within reason. These public access shows from local people started popping up and almost all of them were either hilarious, outrageous, or downright strange.

Deaundra Peek and her band of misfits and loonies ruled the public access airways here in Atlanta for years from 1990 on. The motley crew called themselves Funtone...they even have a website...www.funtone.com. The show was intentionaly really bad...they were parodying the whole cable access genre.

Deaundra Peek's character on the show was the worst drag queen in history...but she was always deliriously enthusiastic...and always really really really bad! She would break out into a spontaneous "YAAAAAAAAAAY!" in an extreme and exagerated southern accent after every few sentences. The show, strangely enough, became a huge hit. She became Atlanta's sweetheart, bless her. Back in the 90's, people in Atlanta started having "Deaundra Parties" and gathering at friend's houses just to watch the show. After a couple of years, even celebrities started doing cameos on the show. This was almost unheard of for public access shows.

I ran across some of their old shows on YouTube and got really excited. These brought back so many crazy memories about watching Deaundra, Duffy Odum, and the gang.

The video is of her singing (if you can call it that) What Is Love by Deee-lite. It's the song where Lady Miss Kier says all the "D" words like "delight", "degorgeous", "divine"...etc. and has that famous lalalalalalala part in it. I put up a Song2Play for you to click on if you don't remember the song. (Deaundra's version is way funnier if you remember the original.)

Some of the "D" words Deaundra sings are "department store", "deranged", "decopage", "deforestation", "Dekalb County", "de-stove top stuffing", "de Viennas is ready"...there was a running joke about Vienna Sausages on the show...everybody ate them and loved them, and "delivery in the rear".

This stuff is painfully strange and painfully freakin' hilarious. Enjoy.





I miss DeAundra Peek's Hi Class Hall of Fame Theatre!!!!!

...hearing this song with you that day was like hearing music for the very first time.

For my girl Misty ...



It's a brand new week. Go out and get 'em Hot Monkey style yall!