Garland's and Brothels

It’s March! Perfect time to finally put the rest of Christmas away. A friend last month shared they finally took down their time last remnants of the holiday season, putting it all away. (No Judgement Here) Her posts reminded me of our first and second covid Christmas’s, where xmas stayed up till the end of January. It’s hard to believe we have just reached the 6th anniversary since COVID. I wish I could say all of this is behind us. But lessons just don’t seem to stick for humanity. Remember, we conveniently forgot about Spanish Flu. I digress, back to the bins of XMAS many of us still need to put away somewhere. All of our decor is stored in a storage space locally. Back in early January when I was packing and returning the bins to storage. l pulled two bins full of glass Xmas garlands in hopes to finally restring them. While the number of containers designated for xmas decor shall be kept quiet. I will admist, I was able to get rid of 10 bins this year.

If you visited @hk5corner over the holidays you might have noticed only two strands of my @christopherradkoco garlands made it on to the tree. This is not normal for our main tree. The reason why only two strands made it onto the tree, is because I attempted to put up five of the 10 strands that I own on the tree, and three broke while I was putting them up. I swear three just broke in a row. After the second strand broke, I turned to Allen and immediately said, Mimi is either pissed off about something, or trying to tell me something. When that third strand broke, I just stopped and said “enough two strands is all I am going to get this year.” Later I realized my mom was probably telling me to stop procrastinating in repairing the 5 strands that over the last 20 years. Now I did spot repairs each year, to prevent more damage, but the root of the problem, is the garland is strings with metallic synthetic string to make it look like silver wire. It’s more like silver tinsel braided to look like string.

So there sat 11 boxes with either post it notes saying “restring”, a 20-30 glass beads or tree shaped pieces sitting in each box. In February I finally did some online research about restringing the garlands. I found a certain type of wire was best in such a project. I headed down the jewelry making aisle at Michael’s last month and found plastic coated wire (19 strands of metal wire coated in plastic to be exact) to restring the garlands. Weds. was the day. I pulled out the two bins and got to work.

I bought a special needle for the project, but sadly the wire was too thick for it. In the end I just used a chopping board with a juice channel around it, to hold the glass bulbs. Then I proceeded to feed the wire through each piece. The tricky part for me was tying the curly end hooks to the wire. I think i have about three triple knots done on each end and several single knots. What I didn’t think about was purchasing clamps to clamp down on the wire. Before they go onto the tree next year, I plan on also closing of looped wire of the curly hooks to prevent the line sliding off the hook. Sadly, I went from 11 boxes purchase over the last 20+ years down to just 10. There has been so much breakage over the last two decades, I had to reduce the lengths of some, and try to fill in for really short strands. There is on strand, that lost so much, I only really have 1/3 of the glass ball left. I think eventually that strand will be used to repopulate other strands.

I love my Radko garland. I remember buying the first box with my mother when we were holiday shopping in SF. I think the first time I saw Radko selling glass garland was in the mid 90’s. I worked at a interior decor shop called Candelier on Maiden Lane in SF in 1996. That holiday season was extra special because my boss was such a giving person. He knew I loved xmas and he gave me some the ornaments he was planning on throwing out, that didn’t sell from the year before. I still have some of those ornaments in my collection today. I loved working in that shop because the owner and his manager/husband were the sweetest guys. They made working there fun, especially when all their favorite clients came in to shop. Sadly the store closed just before 2010. I did go back from time to time to say hello, but was sad to learn the owner passed well before it closed.

I love to help the owner put their window displays together.

A lot of the stores on Maiden Lane have tawdry pasts. The lane was known to be the red-light district of SF during the 1800’s. 33 Maiden lane was once 33 Morton and it was one of the first brothels to open on the lane, several started cropping up by the mid-1800s. I cannot tell you the number of times little old ladies would come into the shop, talking about growing up in SF and how the lane used to be lined with hookers and brothels. Even my own grammie knew the history of the lane. When I first got the job at Candelier, she was the first person to tell me the stories her grandparents, aunts and uncles would tell her about the lane. I remember going back to my bosses and they confirmed the stories, then the little old ladies would add more color to the lane with their own version of events. You can check out the history of Maiden Lane here.

With garlands done, and back in storage, Christmas has finally ended in HK5corner. For now! Still my favorite time of year, and the one time of year I love cooking at home. The decorating part is a process now, but I believe we have hit a new trend with our new holiday party. I missed throwing xmas party every year, which I did for almost every xmas in SF. But getting xmas out and up before the first weekend of December, made the holiday season so much more enjoyable.