If you need a leopard or a spaceship, within a few hours, I could find you one. L.A. is secretly the biggest manufacturing base in the whole country, and that, coupled with the culture-obliterating entertainment juggernaut of Hollywood, means that whatever you might need made, stored or growling for any reason, there's likely someone here who has it for a price, if you know where to look. I was making a feather bouquet for my bedridden inamorata, and yes, on the fifth floor of one of the ramshackle downtown towers that house mainly fly-by-night industries is a kindly woman perched behind a desk who can get you just about any feather you might want. Singly or by the pound, dyed and natural, boas and dusters, from costly pheasant to cheapish ostrich, from uses erotic to religious (or even, for some, erotically religious), the Feather Place seems to have it all, and pretty cheap. Merchants Exchange Building, 719 S. Los Angeles St., Suite 620. (213) 291-3253, featherplace.com.

—Andrew Berardini

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