New Hip-Hop Shop Showcases Two Young Palmdale Artists

The newly opened Chubb’s Hip-Hop shop in Palmdale is alive with art and music, in addition to selling clothes for the young adult set.

Disc jockey Ray Hernandez keeps the music blasting after 3 p.m. when local kids get out of school.

But it’s not the clothes or the music that has the town buzzing.

It’s the art that Hernandez, 21, and Patrick Crockerham, 21, have sprayed on the walls.

“We wanted the shop to have a contemporary, now look,” says co-owner Barbara Marta.

So she and fellow owner Alexis Chapman commissioned Hernandez and Crockerham to get their spray cans out. The young men have decorated the walls with anti-drug and anti-gang murals.

“They have exceptional talent, and we were delighted to have them bring their work to our store,” Marta says.

The result is a blaze of cartoon colors that brightens up the walls of the 21-square-foot shop that Marta says sells the latest in clothing while giving the kids who shop there something to think about.

Chapman and Marta were alerted to the talent of the two artists by Marta’s nephew, Chubb Rodriguez, 17, after whom the shop is named.

“Chubb told us about their work and we invited them to come in and bring their graphics books,” Marta says.

She and Chapman didn’t see the freehand artwork as a marketing tool as much as a way to send a message to their customers. “Kids come in here and they are just blown away,” Marta says.

Hernandez, a graduate of Van Nuys High School, says getting the commission has given him new-found confidence.

“My teachers always encouraged me, but I never had the money to go to college,” Hernandez says, adding that this opportunity has given him a new perspective on what he does.

He and Crockerham are both interested in trying to find a way to enter an arts college to study computer graphics. “It’s something I never thought I would be able to do, but maybe it’s a possibility,” he says.

Barbara Marta says she is looking into ways to try to help the young men realize their dream.

“We hope to help them get scholarships because they are so talented,” Marta says.

In the meanwhile, both have been offered other jobs.

“Several local business people have talked to the Patrick and Ray about doing murals in their places,” according to Marta.

And, both young men are working a new line of T-shirts to be sold in the shop.

This White Man Could, and Did Jump

Harold Goodman of Woodland Hills is an 89-year-old shooter. He says he was the first to practice basketball’s jump shot.

As he tells it, back in 1920 in Yonkers the fourth-grade dropout was playing with some tall guys and he had to shoot over them.

“I took to the air and the jump shot was born,” he says.

Goodman says the shot he founded caught on like wildfire.

“People would come to see me play semi-pro ball and copy my style,” he says.

In 1991 he completed his autobiography. It has been entered in the the Springfield, Mass., Basketball Hall of Fame.

He received a letter from the Hall of Fame’s research specialist, Wayne Patterson, that says the book will become a permanent part of the collection even though the organization could not prove or disprove his jump-shooting claim.

After spending most of his life in New York as a salesman, Goodman and his wife moved to the Valley 30 years ago.

A member of the Screen Actors Guild, he took up acting in 1980 and says he has had parts in the movies Beetlejuice, Mickey & Maude, Moving Violations and a slew of television shows and commercials.

He is also active in several senior citizens organizations, including the Happy Hoofers in which he tap dances.

He says he doesn’t play much ball now, but he could if he wanted to.

“I haven’t gotten old yet,” he says.

“I’m too busy to get old.”

No Rocking Chair for Philip Saretsky Either

Goodman is a kid compared to 95-year-old Sherman Oaks resident Philip Saretsky.

Saretsky and his wife, Estelle, recently celebrated their 72nd wedding anniversary.

The celebration was held at the Sherman Oaks Convalescent Hospital because Estelle Saretsky, 94, has been feeling a bit frail lately.

Philip Saretsky, however, is doing just fine.

According to his daughter, Sonny Raffle of Agoura Hills, who was one of the 50 celebrants at the anniversary party, her father worked at Mr. Guy’s in Beverly Hills until he was 92.

“He used to take two buses to work and two back home every day faithfully,” she says, adding he would probably still be at it except the store lost its lease.

Estelle Saretsky was born in the Ukraine and came to New York City when she was a young woman. She and her New York-born husband lived in the city until they moved to the Valley about 20 years ago. They have three children, nine grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren.

He says he liked his party just fine.

Overheard

“Mommy, what will happen to Catnip and the Monster?”

--Tearful child worried about her cat and dog after being evacuated from Viewpoint School in Calabasas and finding her mother in the parking lot at Von’s in Woodland Hills.