Local Find of the Year: An Evergleam 6' Aluminum Christmas Tree!

We had been looking for a new Christmas tree on and off since moving to the new house because our old tree was 10' high, and because we have no cathedral ceilings in this house, we can't set that one up. Which is really unfortunate, because it is one of those super-realistic ones with branches molded from actual fir tips. Super good looking tree - hate to not use it, but unless we put in cathedral ceilings (which I have actually thought about), it just won't fit the space. So a few weeks ago, my wife (who, recall from the Paul McCobb Intimate Biography story is awesome) came home from work and declared that one of the people that she worked with had a bunch of stuff from the 1960s in their basement and that they may have a christmas tree. My interest was piqued. So I waited for her to talk to her work friend. And waited. And reminded her... and waited. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she came home with the box pictured to the right.  Evergleam!

Let's Play... Name. That. COUCH!

I picked up this couch on Craigslist in the Inland Empire about 5 or 6 years ago for maybe $25 bucks. I saw the ad, wrote them an email, told them I'd take it, asked them to take the ad down, figured out a time, and drove to Uhaul to rent a van. I lived in Riverside at the time, and I made the decision to chance the afternoon traffic coming back from LA to nip out and grab the couch around 3pm. So down the 215 I went. At the big flyover interchange in Riverside, I got onto the 60 and headed toward the west. Out past the Ontario airport, driving toward the Pacific.

Focus on Mid Century Lighting: Dazor, and the Model 2004 UFO Desk Lamp

Dazor began producing lighting products in the years before WWII drew the US into war. In 1938 Harry Dazey and Albert Perbal formed Dazor to manufacture task lighting products, including a design that Dazey had been working on that featured a spring-loaded "floating arm" design. Some of the first products produced by the company were floor lamps with complex spring-tension systems that allowed the lamps to be positioned where the user needed light, and without the need to loosen, tighten, and re-tighten thumb screws each and every time the light source needed to be re-positioned for work. The company's success boomed with the advent of WWII, not least of all because the US government found out that it could save a lot of money with Dazor lights by replacing the massive overhead lights that it had been using for assembly of items where focused lighting that the user could easily adjust the lighting angle and distance from the work piece was more important. During WWII, the US government was Dazor's biggest customer, and up to 165 employees worked in two shifts to fill orders for lamps. Dazor was also the first company to use fluorescent technology - in fact, GE featured Dazor's fluorescent offerings at the 1938 World's Fair in Columbus. Pretty impressive for a start-up.