In search of Lost Angeles, May 18, 2025
My daughter was 13, a latch-key kid coming of age in San Jose in the late 80s, and she needed regalia. LA had regalia, lots of regalia. LA was the queen of regalia.
“Daddy,” she said over the phone. “Na Na? I’ve heard good things. A care package would be welcome.” And so the journey began….
Na Na was in Santa Monica, a block or so up Broadway from Ocean Avenue. It’d been over 20 years since I’d lived in nearby Venice, but thanks to frequent visits to the metropolis I still thought of as my spiritual home, I hadn’t completely lost my neighborhood chops. Besides, even that late in the 80s, finding parking on the street in Santa Monica wasn’t totally impossible, especially if you knew where to look, and you didn’t mind walking a little.
Since I absolutely did know where to look, and I’d never minded walking, one Saturday afternoon shortly after my daughter’s Obi-Wan call I found myself standing just inside the entrance to Na Na, nervously checking my teenage punk/goth shopping list, feeling as though I’d just disembarked on another planet for the first time, totally unprepared for the sensory assault that awaited me.
First came the smells—aromatherapy candles, soaps and essential oils, an amalgam of herbal, floral, quasi-culinary scents that defied classification. It reminded me more of the potpourri of spices, ghee, and mustard oil at my then favorite Indian market in Northridge than the clothing department at the Broadway or I Magnin’s. It was otherworldly in its own dark way, but like Bombay Spiceland, it hinted openly at hitherto unexplored possibilities.
The music too was impressive—very non-elevator, very anti-elevator, in fact—although in the interest of commerce, it was more sonorous than loud. I don’t remember what specifically was playing—a track from Peepshow, maybe, or from Disintegration. Something very like them, anyway.
Architecture took over the introduction then, or more accurately a blend of architecture and set design. It began with the naked walls and exposed ductwork of the building itself, and ended in flourishes of chain link-fencing, acetylene torch-cut steel partitions. and bare-bulb lighting fixtures suspended on chains and shielded by galvanized sheet-metal hoods. Regarded purely as a stage it appeared to be part junkyard, part 19th century waterfront warehouse, and part social club for affluent suburban vampires. I felt right at home.
I didn’t look it, of course—a man in his mid-forties, in his gimme cap, jeans and denim jacket phase—I could see the help wondering if I’d taken a wrong turn at Bakersfield, maybe, or decided to pop in for a visit on my way to a casting call.
The help. All beautiful young women, as one expects behind the counters in such upscale outlets everywhere, but doubly so in LA. Since Na Na was more Siouxsie than Barbie, dark hair was the look here, not blonde, and fiercely petite, warily cosmopolitan rather than bouncy was the mode.
As I folded my list and began my march to the interior, the nearest salesperson peeled away from her counter and came toward me with a straightforward “May I help you?” There wasn’t the slightest hint just how irretrievably beyond anyone’s help she’d already judged me to be.
I was grateful for her forbearance, especially since it took me a moment to recover my composure enough to answer her. The dress code at Na Na was both elaborate and precise. My prospective guide on this adventure had a frosted-tip sunburst magenta hairdo that could have inspired the iron throne, a spiked patent leather dog collar, black lipstick, white eyeshadow, a sheer spider-web silver and black blouse with onyx skull buttons that matched her earrings, and a brocaded shadow panel bustier underneath. Also a miniskirt and hose with a net pattern that echoed her blouse, and knee-high lace-up black boots with what looked like at least thirty pairs of eyelets. I had to remind myself my role here was remote shopper for a teenager with dreams, not understudy in the epic remake of the Judgment of Paris.
The rest was all business. Pointy creepers of a certain size, with a particular thickness of translucent wavy gum rubber sole. The ones with the plain black vamp, not with the white or the faux leopard skin one. Two sheer scarves, one magenta, one chartreuse. One embroidered velveteen jacket with mini chains. Two pairs of spider web panty hose in a certain size, one pair of articulated skeleton earrings, one pair of safety-pin earrings—both pairs for pierced ears. Two tubes of lipstick, one dark magenta, one black, and hair tinting supplies (Has her Mom approved of this? Will I catch hell if she hasn’t?)
An hour of this. My guide was gentle with me, no smirking, no sighing, no raised eyebrows. The rest of the crew, those not serving other customers, kept a respectful distance, but I knew they’d have questions once the cracker apparition was finally out the door.
Years later, I asked my daughter if she remembered my intrepid solo trip to Na Na. She did. “What I’ve wondered ever since,” I said, “is why this young woman actually bothered to be nice to me.”
“One, she was getting paid to be nice, and two, maybe she decided to take pity on a cross dresser with ambitions so obviously above his station. You know, empathy—she’s a punk, you’re a weirdo, maybe there’s a little solidarity going on there.”
“Seems implausible, but it is what it is, I guess. Sometimes the illusion of sincerity works just as well as sincerity itself. Beats the hell out of stereotyping either way.”