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I think any young kid worth his hyperactive body weight can attest to the sugar coated wonders of Disneyland. The park famously and rightfully bills itself as the 'Happiest Place On Earth' and what makes it even more happier, outside of the bells and whistles, is that it doesn't resemble the actual one we're living in. The 'Land effectively removes all evidence of your ordinary world (you just have to block out the corporate sponsorships) and easily wipes you up in theirs.

As a frequent visitor to this alternative world, my favorite one was Tomorrowland (pre- mid-90's makeover from hell). Thanks largely to these visits and aimless, pointless PeopleMover rides, I turned into a sub-conscience sucker of all that space age whiz-bang shtick that was everywhere during the 50's and 60's. After many of these visits, I began to notice samples of this 'whiz bang' world around me in unsuspected places like liquor stores, bars, office buildings, hotel/motels and so on. I even glimpsed it that the old Neptune entrance at the Pacific Ocean Park near my hometown of Santa Monica.

However, by the mid-70's, these romantic visions of urban-rama were beginning to fade from view, thanks to my benile bland times in El Monte and, even worse, spending the year of 1976 in a pisswater town in northern Utah, but I was in my early teens so there wasn't much I could do about it.

To cut this mess short, I "escaped" from Utah and into the semi-heart of the San Fernando Valley...Northridge! My brief stay in this neck of the valley may have been short but I had a blast by regularly visiting an actual 70's period mall and a funky little neighborhood and had my first exposure to Las Vegas (long story, whole other web site). This was just a warm-up.

In the summer of 1978, I moved to El Segundo. Even through this area wasn't totally new to me (lived in Segundo over the summer of 1974), this was the first time that I was actually living in the middle of this space age urban-rama. Maybe it was visions of Utah in the winter that kept creeping up in my nightmares or it's the young impressionable age I saw stuck in, but whatever the reason, my senses were heightened to what was around me. This was the first time that the urban-rama I kept seeing from the back window of our car was in front of me, I was in the middle of it and I couldn't wait to explore it. And one area that got my attention was the other LAX suburb on the other side of the runway, Westchester.

Westchester, mainly the Sepulveda Blvd. area, was four to five blocks of an amazing variety of retail stores of all sizes and interest! This place with it's little characteristic flares here and there would very soon turn into my little alternative world like a scaled down Tomorrowland. The cherry on top was the Loyola Theater. Sadly, by this time, the Paradise Theater, where I saw 'Arthur' (with Stella Stevens, not Dudley Moore) back in 74, was turned into an office building.

One place o' business that first got my attention was 'Westchester Music'. It was on the SW corner on what are now Will Rogers and Sepulveda. It was a large independent music store. It had everything from instruments, lessons, music sheets to records! The later was of large interest if not for one reason, setting on top of their singles racks rested a small Fisher Price record player.

ABOVE: business card from Westchester Music BELOW: the former site of 'W. Music'. Now a parking garage

The store offered their customers to play their selections before buying and with yours truly being a slacker-in-training who was mostly killing time, I took full advantage. Sure, I did buy some of their 45'ers, but to this very day, I'm surprised they didn't kick me out. Thanks to their little listening station, I discovered stuff like Earth Wind & Fire, X-mas records and this lead to a bigger obsession, the movie called Xanadu (see the link page for THAT story). Also bought a cassette copy of ELO's Out Of The Blue' that I spent the next two years wearing out.

Their competitor was another little independent joint called Soundsations Records. They didn't have the 45 player, but this was were I bought some of my LP's as they also sold them used. I bought a promo copy of ELO's 'Discovery', thus completing my ELO obsession.

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