Laugh, but They Mean Business
People just don’t wake up in the morning thinking ‘ “Wow! I must get my drains cleaned today!” says Russell Taylor.
So when British-born Taylor began franchising the British-born Dyno-Rod plumbing and drain repair service in the L.A. area, he sought a way “to break through that threshold of indifference.”
And that is how Dyno-Rod-California became The Lone Drainer and Pronto!
Company president Taylor doesn’t take full credit--he was one of a team that created the slogan for an old Dyno-Rod campaign on British TV--but he’s happy to report that it almost always elicits “a smirking amusement.”
One day, while pondering a new name for his Hollywood shop, Aron Benon happened to tune in to a Laurel and Hardy movie. Inspiration struck.
The next day the shop became Floral and Hardy and business boomed. He’s since relocated to the Beverly Connection and the name still gets lots of giggles. “It beats Aron’s Flower Shop.”
Before Andrew Rakos opened his cafe on Third Avenue, he invited six friends to dinner--and asked them for name suggestions. One came up with Sam and Ella’s, thinking it would be a clever take on salmonella. Rakos thought not.
Then another, truly inspired, suggested Who’s On Third? Perfect, Rakos decided, a nice play on Abbott and Costello, as well as a reminder that the cafe is on Third, not Melrose or Beverly or one of those other nearby streets.
One day one of Costello’s relatives dropped by, thinking there might be a connection to her famous kin.
“No, darling,” Rakos set her straight. “That was ‘Who’s on First ?’ ”
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While thousands of recession-weary businesses languish in the yellow pages somewhere between AAA Accountants and ZZZ Zippers, others are playing the name game.
Need a new coif? There’s The Razor’s Edge on Melrose, Million-Hairs in Malibu, Beauty and the Beach in Venice, Hair After in Northridge, Hair France in Woodland Hills and Mane Attraction in Canoga Park. A Perfect Ten in Encino will do your nails.
Shopping for a bouquet? In Riverside, you’ll find Sherwood Florist. “There is no one here named Sherwood,” acknowledges co-owner Jim Nunally. “We were looking for a catchy name and our son, who was then about 14, came up with this. For a short while, we wore green tunics and caps with feathers.”
In Atwater, a thrift shop calls itself “Out of the Closet.” The double-entendre is meaningful. Explains manager Rosie Whitman, “90% of our donations are from the gay community.” Shop sales benefit hospices and clinics for people with AIDS.
Up in Ventura, “Vital Signs” is a sign maker. Owner John Lyons, who’s quick to explain that he inherited the name from a previous owner, says, “We get calls from people looking for medical supplies. And some people just think it’s too cute.”
When psychologist/watch-collector/pun-lover Ken Jacobs decided to open a watch shop on Melrose Avenue, he called it--what else?--”Wanna Buy a Watch?”
Westside-based “Go for Baroque” provides musicians in styles from baroque to big band for weddings and parties. Director-bassoonist Leslie Lashinsky, who came up with the name, says “it was always kind of a standing joke among musicians”--and it does intrigue people.
And, this being L.A., it should surprise no one to learn that “Ashes to Ashes” is a cremation service.
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Mickey Mouse’s Vietnam?: In the Independent of London, journalist Mark Lawson indulges in a little mouse-mashing as he explains why the Euro Disney theme park near Paris isn’t exactly turning les touristes away at the turnstiles.
(Indeed, the Walt Disney Co. recently announced a big, big deficit for the latest fiscal quarter, attributing a large chunk of it to Euro Disney.)
With undisguised glee, Lawson observes that America, in its ongoing cultural conquest of the world, seems, at last, to have met its Waterloo:
“We might have had to admit McDonald’s to Hampstead, but the forces of darkness have been headed off at Paris. The barbarians are at the gates, but no one is buying their tickets. Euro Disney, we are tempted to think, is America’s cultural Vietnam, a punishment for the hubristic overreach of its commercial colonisation of the globe.”
For the British, Lawson observes, Mickey Mouse falling on his tail presents a rare opportunity “to feel superior simultaneously to the Americans and the French.”
He suggests that Euro Disney’s problem is not simply a sagging economy--the official Disney explanation--but, rather, the inbred inability of either Euro Disney employees or visitors to fling themselves wholeheartedly into fantasyland.
By contrast, Lawson says, the American psyche is “famously attuned to fantasy in numerous ways, of which the eight years of the Reagan presidency are merely one example.”
But, lest Europeans get too smug, Lawson notes:
“European cultural triumphalists might reflect that the main artistic export from the cradle of civilisation in recent years has been the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber.”
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Overheard: Director Brian De Palma, who’s been scaring moviegoers for two decades (“Carrie,” “Dressed to Kill” and, currently, “Carlito’s Way”) in an interview on National Public Radio:
“I don’t like to see scary films. I don’t like to be scared. ‘Boo!’ is something that I don’t like. I’d rather be the puppet master than the puppet . . . “
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This weekly column chronicles the people and small moments that define life in Southern California. Reader suggestions are welcome.
