Hollywood Regency, The Shop

This is where I work, and it is the best place on earth. Hands down.

Hollywood Regency was started in April 2007 by my boss lady and a friend, mostly to sell furniture and household things with a small emphasis on vintage clothes and accessories. Then the economy tanked and nobody was buying furniture anymore. So, my boss realized that the clothing etc. was paying the rent, and we switched to that over time. Her friend moved and sold his interest to her, and somewhere around October of 2007 I started working there. It has evolved into many TV appearances, numerous awards from local media for Best Vintage Clothing, quite a few mentions in magazines, most recently a brief blurb in Sunset Magazine! People come in and love us! Lately I have been hearing that we are unique; that there is nothing in Phoenix like us. It's pretty and happy, and sparkly and shiny. It is also very clean, as we wash/dry clean our garments before they are put on the floor. I spend the majority of my time there ironing and steaming, mending and organizing.

This is the BEST JOB EVER and I know I am damned lucky to have ANY job right now, much less one that rocks. I KNOW how good I have it here. I thank my lucky stars every day that things have worked out the way they have for me with this place, because I have had some crap jobs, let me tell you. I have come a long way from the teenage welfare mom I was 21 years ago. That I get to dress up every day and go to a magical, beautiful place like this to work is an everyday miracle for me. I get paid conventionally but also in so many other ways-I think I have finally acquired something that looks suspiciously like self-confidence. I've never been given this level of responsibility and it feels pretty damned nice. I've never been the best employee at my former jobs but this one I strive to be as good as I can. I want to live up, every day, to the expectations that are put on me. I think I manage to achieve that most of the time.

The pictures I have shown were taken about a month ago, just a sample of what we are all about. I want to try and show more clothing in future posts. (We are re-setting the shop this week.) But I had to include one of our shop kitties, Lamar, asleep in his suitcase-we can't sell it now because he would be very annoyed with us! He is about 12 years old, so he is a cranky old man in a cat suit most of the time, but people love him. I will get a picture of our other fella, Basil, soon. We love our cat boys-we even have people who come in just to see them!

So, that's my job. My fabulous, wonderful, beloved job. Come see me and we'll play dress up! :-D