They Shut Me Down

WHEN I FIRST MOVED TO LOS ANGELES, I stayed with my good friends Brooke & Charlie, who were kind enough to let me live in their guest room for three weeks while I looked for an apartment. Their place was just a few blocks south of Melrose between Fairfax and La Brea (for those of you familiar with Los A.), and so I would occasionally walk up to Melrose to peruse the weird-ass shops and maybe get a Jamba Juice.

Whenever I would do this, I would invariably walk past Drake's, a porn store that in its front windows would always have the most homo-erotic displays. Somewhere in the boxes of crap I have in our guest room, I have a photo of me in front of Drake's, frowning, a mannequin dressed like a leather daddy behind me.

While surfing the internet recently, I came across this picture on Curbed L.A.:



So, it's the end of an era, I guess. My namesake gay porn store on Melrose has shuttered. If my life were a novel (and I'm 83% certain it is not), this might be a sign of some sort, a metaphor, a portent. Instead, it just means there's one less thing in Los Angeles that connects my name to leather sex wear.