The EveryDay Cartoon

On the facebook page "You know you are from Old school Pasadena when" they posted this picture of Pasadena Old Town on Fair Oaks Blvd very close to Colorado Blvd. circa 1960's Those of you familiar with this area now know it is a hopping place with every kind of restaurant and upscale shops.  In the late 1960's as a teenager I partnered with some other teens and took a chance (with the backing of our parents) and opened up a hippie boutique in the basement of this shop you see in this photo.Underneath this signage "Pasadena Old Town" was a place known as "The Catacombs" where several shops spaces were for rent. We took one of the three spaces and called our shop "The Everyday Cartoon". We sold handmade clothes, jewelry, incense holders and beaded hippie necklaces, headbands etc. The area was terribly run down and as you can see by the girlie theater next door  though I think this was gone by the time we moved in. I may be blocking that from my memory. I wrote this on their facebook page:"Thank you Peter C. Wilson for this classic photo. I co-owned a hippie boutique downstairs in the Catacombs called "Everyday Cartoon" in 1967. This whole neighborhood was pretty rundown. At the corner of Colorado and FairOaks was the Free Press. I remember there weren't many places at the time you could get anything decent to eat. Of course there were some bars. It was pretty seedy but we had a great time hoping it would be the next Haight Ashbury. Across the street was "David the Sandal Maker" and there was a cool gallery downstairs in the Catacombs next to our shop. It was a cool place to be even in those early years. Now I am amazed at how this whole area has been transformed. I love this picture Peter." In the end we only had the shop for one year. The deal to get our parents to co-sign for the lease was that at the end of that time we would go to college. That fall I started UCLA but I will forever remember that crazy wonderful time and all the characters that came into our shop. The stories I could tell you. PS We always made the rent money and our parents never had to give us a dime. I could never thank them enough for trusting us and giving us that year to do something wild.