Anyway, I was coming back to LA with two friends after vacationing northeast of the city, and we were going to be passing near Hollywood, so I suggested we stop in and check out the cafe in person. I explained the situation to my friends and they agreed to walk into the place with me. We laughed because of how our visit was going to look: we're all in our late twenties, and we each happen to be pretty fit and over 6-feet tall...this coupled with the somewhat uncomfortable nature of the call we were paying made us feel a bit like thugs trying to strongarm someone or something. It was funny.
As we approached the store I noted again how ideal the cafe seemed to be, with its location on a Hollywood corner that seemed to be bustling with people in general and trendy LA people in particular. Certainly would be a great place to have Wavelength Clothing shirts hanging in the window, I thought again, imagining a happy sequence where a trendy Hollywood insider person sees shirt, buys it, and wears it to musical performance/photo shoot/film set, where it is somehow catapulted into the national spotlight, making Wavelength Clothing a household name. "We get celebrities all the time," the guy had told me when I dropped the shirts off. "Sheryl Crow comes in a lot." Or maybe it was Sarah Maclachlan (whatever - same difference).
The guy must have seen us coming, because he popped out as we approached. "I was going to call you," he said, and then explained that he hadn't figured out how to display the shirts yet, but that he would very soon, and that he expected they'd sell well as bad news on Bush kept coming in the weeks ahead. He also said he'd sold four shirts, and paid me for each at the discounted wholesale price we'd agreed on. In my Perry Mason moment, I asked how he sold the shirts if they weren't on display; his answer didn't really make sense, but I didn't press it. We agreed that he'd take some more time with the shirts and call me in a few weeks.
I had approached the cafe with a fair amount of apprehension, but on the way back to the car I felt kind of silly. It looked like I was the victim not of a rip-off artist but a guy who was just kind of flaky. I couldn't be mad at him. After the guy and I had bid each other adieu, he made a point to make a mildly smug goodbye to my two buddies, kind of acknowledging their role as intimidators and making fun of it at the same time. It was a pretty cool exit maneuver and I had to give him style points for it.
