Gendy Alimurung

Sleeping With the Pigeons

Gendy Alimurung
Photo by Jack Gould Big companies like Western and Terminix dominate the pest-control industry. But increasingly, scrappy smaller companies swoop in, scoop their clients. Armando Cosio’s two-man company, La Cucaracha, had just underbid Western and won a massive pigeon job at the main post office. In appearance Cosio made me......

Nightmare on Spring Street: Fred’s Revenge

Gendy Alimurung
Photo by Jack Gould Creeping down to the basement. Trailing Fred Reese, the night exterminator, through the inky blackness. Fred is on rodent reconnaissance. At an as-yet-undetermined time, depending on the severity of the infestation, Fred will send in another team of exterminators, the infantry. We’re in a building in......
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The Elusive Bite

Gendy Alimurung
CHER HAD IT BAD FOR HORS D'OEUVRES. AS MRS. Flax in the movie Mermaids, she chopped sandwiches into stars. Not even breakfast was safe — Mrs. Flax reconfigured every meal into frilly bite-size morsels. It was like living at a perpetual cocktail party. Which wouldn't really be too bad, except......

The Forgotten Woman

Gendy Alimurung
More of Aguilar’s work can be seen through Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, 5363 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, Or vielmetter.com. Once plus sizes were a fashion ghetto. Now they have their own runway show. --Kate Betts, former editor of Harper‘s Bazaar, apologizing to Renee Zellweger inThe New York Times for......
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Tee Time

Gendy Alimurung
Oh, the lowly T-shirt. Or is it? It’s the uniform of the masses, the secret stash in the drawer of every die-hard Prada-purse-toting, $500-Gucci-pants-wearing label whore, the one cool thing the proletariat can wear and still look good. Your T-shirt flaunts your tribe: It says you are clever. Or cultured......
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Retail Revolutionaries

Gendy Alimurung
“I try to make what is not there”: Orchid Velasquez‘s red satin halter blouse with black lace back and crepe-and-satin skirt with embroidery; lavendEr sheer stretch polyester dress with burned-out velvet insets and tulle trim; knit cotton top with inset panels and decorative stitching, and denim skirt with upholstery fabric......
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The Delivery Diaries

Gendy Alimurung
ONCE, IN THE MIDDLE OF AN AFTERNOON class on Victorian lit, my friend Roxane dialed out for beer. A six-pack of Coronas, a box of Lemonheads, plus a guy to drive it over in 30 minutes. "Don't forget the limes," she said. For the next hour and a half, Roxane......
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The Social-ists

Gendy Alimurung
Photo by Julie Pavlowski A MIDCENTURY MODERN HOUSE. WHITE WALLS. White chairs. In one room, Gwyneth Paltrow gazes at a plexiglass vitrine holding two live white mice. The mice run on an exercise wheel. The wheel is draped in diamonds. Someone hands you a cocktail and the music swells. Welcome......
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Gold Dust Woman

Gendy Alimurung
WHILE GOLDSMITH DARA WAXMAN WAS WORKING as a set dresser on A Nightmare on Elm Street 5, she happened upon a piece of rusted metal along the old railroad tracks near the basement where they were filming. Today, 13 years later, after rummaging about for a moment in a corner......

Auction Heroes

Gendy Alimurung
“Do we hear a hundred?” “One-fifty!” “One-fifty! Do we hear two?” “Two hundred!” “Do we hear 250? ”Two-hundred going once . . . 200 going twice . . . “Sold! ’Alien Love No. 1.‘ One 22- by 30-inch Iris print by COOP. ”Next up: ’meow meow eek eek,‘ Lot No......