History Lesson #1: Oakland, California

The year is 2003. The place is the Franklin Apartments on 41st Street, near Telegraph in the Temescal district. I was a block and a half away from the MacArthur BART station and the rent had just come down from $1,400 to $1,200. It was a find.

I shared the digs with a long time friend whom I'd known in high school. He was a grad student at SFSU studying creative writing. At the time, I was working at a ceramic supply store on San Pablo Avenue in north Berkeley. I'd been there roughly a year and a half.

Long story short, the very February we moved into that apartment, I was let go from the ceramics store for reasons I'm still not too clear on. At the time the boss sacked me I was working on this Winchester Mansion of a product catalog for our shop that our boss could never quit changing. I adapted to his changing tastes as best I could, but oh well. I couldn't keep up. My dismissal was a blessing in disguise.

I panicked for several hours. A few phone calls later I'd re-landed an old part time job at this disreputable bagel store in the Piedmont neighborhood slightly east of my apartment. The food was great and my coworkers were incredible folks. We were touted as having the best bagels west of the Mississippi, but we were nearly shut down by the health department several times. I checked with some friends and contacts and managed to get a couple other extremely part time gigs and some under-the-table work with a novelty items sales rep. So I had enough work to scrape by.

The exact moment when I decided to try my hand at making a sock monkey is a bit fuzzy to me. I can't remember if I'd been sacked from the ceramics place yet or not. The Bay Area was rife with really good comic book stores. A favorite of mine, Comic Relief, near the corner of University and Shattuck in Berkeley, stocked a coffee table book full of different sock monkeys. I thumbed through it and got some ideas. I thought I'd have a go at one.

As a walker and cyclist, I was constantly wearing holes in my socks. I kept the throwaways in a trash bag in my closet, unwilling to just dump 'em. I'd started cutting some up for quilting squares. But alas, a flame had sparked within me for stuffed toys. I selected some choice socks and began cutting up parts for a sock monkey, not really sticking to any pattern.

The tedious hand stitching got the better of me and I abandoned the project perhaps a third of the way through. By the time I resumed, my friend Marta had shown me the basics on a sewing machine, and I started afresh with brand new socks. The result was my first ever Stupid Creature, a black, demonic-looking thing which Marta later named Albertine once his eyes were sewn on.

Thus began what soon became my career in the plush industry. To follow: information on survival through networking and hobnobbing with other professionals, my sewing class, spiritual revelations and helpful friends. Do tune in soon.