A Visit to Advance Optical

 A Visit to Advance Optical




     A totally LA experience was visiting Advance Optical, located in the historic Story Building right near the corner of 6th and Broadway in mysterious downtown. Advance was the place of business for Greg's colorful Uncle Percy Kenmir who was an optician or lens-grinder as they were sometimes called. The rather dingy office was all business and as a wholesale only establishment there were no amenities for customers since their role was producing correct lenses for the glasses-wearing people of the city of the angels. It was somewhat daunting as the sound of the place consisted of hard steel wheels grinding on glass and workers carefully staring at the objects on the wheels. This was not  a time when computers did measurements or a prescription was  set and forgotten. Each and every order had to be right or they did not get paid. It was also appropriate that Percy worked at a trade since he thumbed his nose at capitalism and as mentioned before believed in the Russian model of Communism. He was officially a certified  Gus Hall commie and that took some gumption that did not impress his brother in law John F. Sheehy. Percy was known by Greg for his tamping of his Lucky Strikes on his thumbnail and his wry remarks about the evils of the current American government. As another nephew of Percy's reported he was quoted as saying "I see hard tiimes ahead" when Dick Nixon took over. Briefly, I was poked in the eye during a basketball game and by 1967 I was suffering from some near-sightedness. I went to a local optomitrist who misdiagnosed me but then BC stepped in and got me a correct prescription. We went to visit Advance and picked out a pair of glasses from a shoe box of samples, went to lunch and came back to my new hip wire rim spectacles. The price was $12 and I could see perfectly. For a few years I could visit Advance and get my new prescriptions until the marvelous Uncle Percy Partridge Kenmir retired. The edifice where Advance made lenses went way back to 1910 as the Walter P. Story building and was ironically  a very successful venture right from the start. All interior corridors featured marble floors and wainscoting to the height of the doors. The lobby also featured a compact marble staircase, wide banisters, two-story newel posts, and a Tiffany-style stained glass skylight. Upon opening, the building's ground floor contained the largest plate glass windows west of Chicago. None of this meant a damn thing to the working man toiling over a piece of glass. 



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