Actually, I was taking the picture of the car, but in the background is this bygone Larkspur establishment of the seventies. Scroll down for a detail. In my day (1950s) it was Larkspur Hardware, and from the front hung one of my all-time favorite Larkspur business signs, featuring a can of Sherwin-Williams paint emptying its luscious multi-colored contents over an Earth globe. After Natural Foods, it became Artist's Proof, or what I liked to think of as the "noetic bookstore," because I never ceased to marvel at the (then) novelty of a book store with a "Noetics" section, whatever that was. Behind the car, of course, the late lamented 464 Magnolia Restaurant, scene of many a Penna Family celebratory meal in those days. Earlier, it was the phone company exchange, at which my godmother worked in the 1940s. At the left, a bit of 470 Magnolia, in the late 1940s and early 1950s The Larkspur Dry Goods Shoppe run by Mrs. Mabel G. Stephens. It was there in 1946 that my mother bought all of the infant clothing and bedding items for the newborn me. A couple years later, in a back room, I sat for an adorable portrait.
This was taken on a day in January during the annual street fair/open house that downtown Larkspur held in those days, hence the presence of one of several vintage cars, balloons and aimlessly wandering passersby. I know all the tree-lovers will hate me for this, but I'd prefer a treeless Magnolia Ave. downtown. You can see trees anywhere; what you can't see with them there are all the neat old storefronts that make downtown Larkspur the special place it is. Harumph.
