Warshaw House: Shanghai Roof
Raising the roof in Beverly Hills these days are six Chinese artisans, all the way from Shanghai, to crown the new house of Carmen and Louis Warshaw.
The roofers, housed in Monterey Park condos, have been in California for nearly six months, laying and fitting about 300,000 hand-crafted tiles, also imported from China. “We found that American roofers simply couldn’t do it,” Carmen Warshaw says. “It’s a craft, an art.”
The unique house is patterned by architect Bob Ray Offenhauser after a 16th-Century Souchou country house. It is a style greatly admired by the Warshaws--who have been active in local and state politics--during a recent trip to China.
“The roofers speak no English, so we had to get an interpreter,” Louis Warshaw says. “What with Offenhauser and our contractor--Jack Lautenschlager--pronunciation was tricky at best. You have to be a little crazy to do something like this. The cost? I’m never going to tell.”
“Even though the style is ancient,” Carmen adds, “it’s a very modern look. “Bob (Offenhauser) loved the style, and we loved his plans. People wonder why we chose Chinese. Besides the look, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s because when I was in politics they called me the ‘Dragon Lady.’ ”
Student Looks at Services for Blind
For Michael Baillif, it’s a question of insight. Baillif, a literature major and one of 140 small-school students to win a Watson Scholarship this year, will head for England and Sweden after graduation from Claremont McKenna College.
“I wanted to study how two relatively developed countries with a socialist bent deal with their blind citizens,” says Baillif, 21, who is himself blind. “I’m curious to see how attitudes and programs work in England and Sweden. I’ll be pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong, but I have a feeling that the quality of services there, and their general attitudes, will provide (the American blind) with a better understanding of what not to do here. America has about the best general setup for the blind--and it’s not very good.”
Baillif’s main criticism of U.S. services and programs “is their focus: They tend to foster dependence.” Rather than tell a potential psychologist to go for it, “They’ll say, ‘We’ll help you get a B.A., then you’ll have enough to answer the phone in the psychologist’s office for $5 an hour.’ That’s very shortsighted.”
Even the campus-based Disabled Students’ Services, while well-meaning, foster dependence, Baillif says. “They talk to your professors for you, line up readers. . . . In the long run, though, nobody but me is going to my job interview; I’ll be alone when I go to my boss and ask for a raise.”
“What we need,” Baillif says, “is a general attitude that blindness is simply a characteristic. Given quality training and proper attitudes, a blind person can do virtually anything as well as a sighted person.”
A Fleet of Cars for Kids
She was an actress and a mother, just finishing a role in “The Howling” and looking for a way to make money between gigs. He was a father and “transportation captain” at Universal Studios, looking for a business he could call his own.
Elisabeth Brooks and Ernie Lipman put their heads together. Besides a good 5-cent cigar, what did the world need most? Their world--centering around Studio City and North Hollywood--most needed a chauffeur system for the kids of working parents like themselves, they decided. Thus was the world introduced to Shlep-a-Ride.
First client, though, was no kid. “We put a small ad in the B’nai B’rith Messenger,” Brooks says, “and we got one senior citizen, Gladys, who wanted to go to all those singles events. Talk about starting small! Customers: one. Cars: one. Budget: zero.”
There is a fleet of 13 cars now, and a permanent clientele of nearly 100. “It’s membership only,” Brooks says, “and these are our regulars: kids car-pooling to school, some seniors, some young people doing film work and auditions--if they’re under 18 they need a chaperon. We’ve schlepped Beau Bridges’ kids, Kristy McNichol’s, Joanna Kerns’. We’re going to expand the territory, the fleet, and remember: For every car we put on the road, that’s five we take off.”
“It started as a mom-’n’-pop operation,” says Brooks, “and it got bigger and bigger.
It’s almost frightening.”
