A Show of Hands

Tina (“just Tina’), who sees clients up a flight of stairs on an alley behind the Vista Theater in Los Feliz, has five hands displayed on the wall outside her business. “I read palms,’ she explains.

Like other storefront psychics in L.A., Tina uses the palm the way barbers use a striped pole: as visual shorthand. In fact, so many psychics use this image to promote themselves that this city of palms has become, well, a city of palms. (One of Tina’s is neon.)

When sign painters create palms for psychics, something unusually self-referential happens. The hand paints itself. And always in the same gesture that says “halt,’ like a traffic cop, or “peace,’ like Dave Garroway, and, above all, “Look, I have nothing to hide . . . and much to reveal.’