Avenue 50

What a nice day. Judy (my knitting around LA partner) and I went to the opening of Connie Rohman’s solo exhibition of The Thomas Guide Project at Avenue 50 Studio art gallery.
It was a B-E-A-utiful day, warm enough to not wear a sweater, sunny and sparkling clear. The kind of day when everyone goes out. The Canyon and PCH were busy, The 10 was packed due to a two tow truck accident, as in: it took two tow trucks to clear the involved cars away.
Before going to the opening, we stopped for a French dip sandwich at Philippe The Original (pronounced fil-LEEPS). It’s been a long time since I’ve been there. The last time was with Judy in 2017 – 6 years! Judy had a beef dip and I had the lamb dip with Swiss. We shared a slice of carrot cake. And damn, was it good, so good. Like I-had-forgotten-how-good good.

We were so hungry after our hour and 45 minute drive Downtown that we didn’t take pictures of our sandwiches before we ate them.

Avenue 50 looked great! Kathy Gallegos has done a great job with the five exhibitions there. There are currently four exhibitions, all varied, all good.
The Thomas Guide Project is mixed media fabric sewn onto Thomas Guide pages. For those who don’t know: the Thomas Guide was an incredible map book of LA and Orange Counties. I acquired one as soon as I got to southern California, and it’s how I learned my way around. I still used it right up till I got my first Iphone in 2009, it was faster and better than the early iterations of MapQuest. The last edition we bought was 2005, we still have it. I suspect lots of people still have one on a shelf at home.

People were reminiscing about what the Thomas Guide had meant to them. I saw a middle-aged woman showing a young’n how you used it, how you could look up any street in the index, and find it on a map page. I told Keith, Connie’s husband,”I loved this book, I loved it.” He said, “everyone did.” He told me he knows someone who still carries one in her car.

Connie had an intact 1998 edition on a table. I flipped through and found my page, the page where my house is. I actually had remembered the page number, and when I looked it up to verify my memory, I was thrilled to find it’s one of the pages Connie did. I bought it.

I looked up Judy’s house, only to find it is on the page right after mine. No great surprise since we live close to each other – especially by LA standards. But, Connie didn’t do Judy’s page since it is on the back side of my page in the 1998 edition. How fitting that Judy and I are two sides of the same page.

For Judy and I, another good food and fiber art day.