Ok, so the opening party is over and now it's down to "bidness".

Our manager, Jessica started today. I freakin love her...stylish, dynamic, knock-dead-gorgeous, professional, and has this wicked wry wit. She is a big "product whore" like me, and comes from a background of working with exceptional merchandise. Oh yeah...I think she's gonna be a real asset to Marc and me, and she seems to be genuinely excited about being on-board at the beginning of this crazy adventure. I'm head over heals for her already.

Marc posted some pics of the store over at his blog, but I'm gonna bore you with some more.

We opened 5 weeks from demolition. Damn. This was truly "guerrilla retailing". We had set an hour of 7pm on Nov 16th and we opened right on the minute...with not a second to spare. Whew. Most of the merchandise was still in crates and boxes three days prior.




Classic retail scene. Here we see a big ol' queen checkin' out and tweakin' the window display he's working on.




Marc propping himself up and grinning after 48 hours with no sleep and a bottle of wine.



After we ran reports tonight, this turned out to be our top item so far. They are porcelain balls with typographic letters painted on them. You can fill a bowl with them and it looks cool, or you can buy your name, or the names of your family and stuff. They are just really different and cool. A customer came in Saturday afternoon and bought 52... 2 complete alphabets. (CHA CHING!)



I think that this is my favorite design element we put into the store so far. They are hand-blown glass upside down table lamps. We have them lining the vintage check-out counter.



Me, unpacking some crudites trays from Studio B. Apparently, if you call them "crudites trays" you can charge twice as much as if you called them "chip 'n dips".

But seriously, the stuff from Studio B is amazing. I really think they are the most beautiful and thoughtfully designed ceramics available today. It's all done by Brenda Holzice, a potter from Berkley. She just has this ethereal talent for marrying form and function. All her pieces are very modern, but organic. Just beautiful. I have been a huge fan of her work for years and am really proud to have some of it in the store. I did a sampling of her stuff, and am going to do a big showing of her pieces for our Mother's Day/Wedding floorset next year.

You can check her stuff out at her broker's website...

www.magenta-inc.com

Click on "Studio B" to see Brenda's work.

Ok...let's just pause, breathe...and break this shit down.

I was 3...my grandpa died. From the yellowed newspaper clippings my grandma saved and all the recollections of family and friends-of-family, I gather he was quite the man. Seems everybody loved him...in a spiritual, political, and down to earth intimate way. If I can garner a fraction of the respect and love that his family and peers held for him, I'm good. I only realized his role in society in Chattanooga when I started working at the stadium for the B team baseball games when I was 16. They were just beginning to renovate the stadium, and when we walked into the old press room for the first time in 20 years, there were old press pieces plastered in frames all along the walls. A good percentage of them had my grandpa "mugging" in them. I was amazed and really proud.

I want to make John Sr and Jessie proud. My maternal grandparents? They don't make them like that anymore.

Now for some real shit...

On my "father's" side...I aint too hip. There was always an uncomfortable shroud when I was growing up with members of my paternal family. It wasn't entirely missing, but it was, when I look back...just sorta incomplete and formal. My brother, in his usual fashion, lays down the truism (as we were all gathered in the car behind my mother's hearse)...that my "dad" was impotent and my mom had several boyfriends along the way...two of which produced me and Gerry. Some shit, huh? But you know what? Johnny raised us like his own. He loved and nurtured us. After the divorce, when my mom snagged all the furniture, he used to blanket the entire house with these big rolls of kraft paper and we would color and make up stories all weekend. Damn, that man knew how to teach and tap into my creativity and nurture my brain. He was the only father I knew, and as it turns out, not only a good one...but a DAMN good one.

And then there's Marc. No human walks the face of the earth with more compassion, sheer unaffected humanity, humility, and genuine love than he. Marc throws sparks and energy he is unaware of. This man is unaware of the love he radiates because he expects nothing in return. He feels he deserves nothing in return. Sound a little like Buddha to you? Obviously so. My mission is to make sure he gets the dividends from all the genuine love, humility and karma he has been building up all these years. I'm gonna make my sweet Marc a star. If anybody deserves it, it's him.

Some layers of love transcend convention. Some layers of love just are.

Seems I've always had my angels. Strange angels. Angels nonetheless.




T

Kudos to the folks at Southern Voice for the design. This is the ad that will be running in the local tabs Friday and next week.

I'm taking a break at the store. I'm about to go crazy with a little brush painting inside the gaps of 30 feet of slatwall. We'll be here into the wee hours this morning.

So, we hired our first two employees today. Jessica was a manager at an Anthropolgie, (www.anthropologie.com) so she knows the merchandise (our's is very similar) and has a good background in display. Michelle came onboard with us too. I had worked with her in my old job, and she is dynamite.

Ok...enough break...back to painting little crevices.

T

Plath and Kafka aint doin' it for me right now. Oh, I love to go where they go sometimes...I really really do. I go there alot. But fuck no, not now. I just don't want them near me right now, feel me? There is a time and a place for everything.

Just so you know, since Halloween, I've shed the Lion head and the phat goatee. I'll keep the Hello Kitty tee shirt just in case.

Right now, there is more time for Clinton...I'm talking about George...not the other two. And The Ohio Players.

Shit, yall...there's a lot to be said about reacting and living and acting the fool instead of thinking and brooding too much sometimes.

Oh shit...just breathe.


Update: 5:20am...I'm channeling...chan-nel-ing...chan-el...uh......why am I picking this image up?......


......

T