Friends of Friends

Yesterday was "Tour". Typically a biannual event where the doors to the Castle, including those to many of the individually owned apartments, are thrown wide open to the paying public, at 20 bucks a head as long as I've lived here. The funds in the tens of thousands have traditionally gone to restoration of the Castle (we're crumbling at bit but it's subtle), until this year under the auspices of a nonprofit group: the Castle's very own charity to itself "Friends of Castle Green". What I know about the inception of "Friends" is wonderful to me. It was the brain child of castle resident and retired Art Institute teacher, T. Capote (not his true name) after he attended "The Forum".

"The Forum" is a self help seminar with cultish leanings that goes back to the 1970s under the name "EST". I know this because my mother and her hippie baby boomer friends attended, then she enrolled me and my brother in "EST", the little kid version. Stand out about that is that there were hours of psychological exercises we had to participate in before we were allowed to pee. I would never survive now, I apparently don't have the bladder capacity I did as a young child. I don't wear Depends®, I just struggle to make it through a 2 hour movie.

Somewhere between my attending as a little kid and the founding of the nonprofit group, "Friends of Castle Green", "EST" became "The Forum". A friend who attended used to call me regularly from "The Forum" phone banks to invite me to seminars. I'm used to this as they used to call me personally when I was a little kid after attending the seminar, they didn't even ask for my mother. Despite the fact that I think it's a cult I do know of people who have gotten good out of "The Forum", clarity and motivation, and I think "Friends of Castle Green" was one of those good things born. I'm just in love with its origins. I'm also fascinated by the Scientologists a couple buildings down the street from Castle Green, but more about that later.

worksheet from 1970s EST seminar

"Tour" is what first brought us to Castle Green. Leif thought I wanted to see the castle because it's pretty, but I wanted to see the castle because where we were living wasn't pretty.

We lived in a 70s building on Madison Avenue in Pasadena. 70s was the age of the median resident as well as the time it was built. The sign outside the building read "Casa Serena" which I roughly translated as "house of the dead". I'm not anti-age, more anti-retirement home, though no doubt I'll end up in one; we are childless. Interestingly the street number was "420", further emphasizing the "serenity" of life there.

Castle Green is, to my mind, outwardly tacky, a mishmash of architectural styles that aren't meant to be together, though I like the bridge. But inside it's purely Victorian, with its awnings, moldings and wrought iron. I grew up in a Victorian house in the North East, so Castle Green felt like home.

On the spot I told Leif I wanted to live there. He responded in a way he thought was completely safe, "Sure honey, if you can find an apartment here". Needless to say he didn't count  on my determination, resourcefulness and hatred of "Casa Serena". By next tour we were living in Castle Green.

Oh, and they fertilized the lawn twice a year with cow dung.

Secrets of Tour:

Everyone hides all their crap in the basement. Mostly Castle Green is trying to get people to get their shit out of the basement, with threatened Goodwill pickups, etc., but Tour is the exception. Whatever it takes to make residents happily put their homes on view is encouraged.

Tour is Spring and Winter Cleaning, we clean more intensely for Tour than we do for visiting family members, possibly because we care more what total strangers think about us than our own families.

Everyone in Castle Green has a giant flat screen television and uses a Mac computer. You will observe this for yourself on Tour. I think the Mac/Apple Computer part makes perfect sense. Apartments at the castle are very nice but tiny and expensive. People who buy Macs are used to spending too much for too little, but really nice "too little".

Everyone asks the same questions: "How long have you lived here?",  "Do you like living at the castle?",  "Are you an artist?", "How old is your dog?". I've rehearsed Leif on these questions so he can respond even if I'm not in the apartment to help. I won't tell you the answers because I don't want to spoil it for you if you take the tour.

Free wine is often served on tours and yes we avail ourselves. One year we were even given wine tickets. Extras could be obtained.

We stare at you too, it works both ways. We hear the funny things you say about our homes ( "It's beautiful but I could never live here" and "Do you think that's an antique?" referring to our toaster or whatever), but we also talk about you.  While you take pictures of our Victorian architecture, I take pictures of you. It passes the time (5 hours).

People touring our Yorkie. Note, I have made Leif wear an Event Staff t-shirt I found at Goodwill.

Tour is not without scandals: wrought iron gate crashers, psychic phenomena, but this year topped it all. In a massive coupe, Castle Green Home Owners Association took over Tour from the aforementioned Friends of Castle Green, armed with accusations of bossiness and inept accounting.

When "The Friends" ran the tour they had total control over where the proceeds went. Since Tour is a thing born of a gay, elderly art professor's sensibilities, these funding choices weren't up for debate. The Home Owners Association grew frustrated with being, to their minds, a non voting partner in Tour.

Projects chosen for Tour funds were frequently of an esoteric nature, focused on returning the Castle to a structure as historically accurate as research and money would allow, but not always visibly different. At least not visible from the street, and if there's one thing the HOA is obsessed with it's curb appeal.

Apart from Tour and Home Owner Fees the Castle's significant income is from weddings, on our front lawn (the castle green). As evidence visit www.castlegreen.com. We might as well be a banquet hall in Brooklyn, the majority of information  on our website is about how to rent out the castle for your event.

The Tour accounting questions arose long after the control issues, when an inquiry was made by an emerging force in Castle Green, The Victorians.

A psychic aiming his divining rods at my husband's desk.

And there came to Castle Green one day, in the 21st century, a Victorian. A young man bearing a laptop but also a cane (defined here as a decorative walking stick), dressed in full Victorian garb even in the heat of Pasadena's summer.

Now, most the residents of Castle Green have "Victorian tendencies" or they wouldn't choose to live here. Even the park adjacent to Castle Green (Pasadena's Central Park) has Victorian tendencies, featuring courts for two sports, Lawn Bowling and Croquet. I'm guessing the hey dey of these sports is not recent, but they flourish here. They make an odd mix with the homeless who spill out into the park from the Goldline Station.

But back to the young Victorian. His commitment to his era goes beyond his wardrobe of vests, coats, tails and the occasional bowler, it extends to his apartment, the highlight of which for me is the bathroom sink, adorned with a floor length skirt, so it doesn't show its unseemly limbs.

Entertainingly he was initially on the party floor, 5, and apparently witnessed but did not participate in its debaucheries. The debaucheries were of a college frat nature: semi naked girls, drinking, the tampon festooning someone's door incident.

Our Victorian's father is apparently a foreign magnate of something the young man considers capitalist but his mother is, like himself, a practicing Victorian. His mother was appropriately enamored of the Castle and it came to pass that the Victorians and their circle, other Victorians, became regular participants in "Tour", demonstrating Victorian dancing and still more Lawn Bowling to the paying public.

The Friends of Castle Green's complaint about the Victorians was that, though they were overwhelming in number, none payed their $20 on Tour day because they were engaged as performers. Still they toured the building and I liked seeing Victorians where they should be, in these apartments, but then I also liked when Benvenuto, the elderly elevator operator, dressed up as Santa and visited the apartments on winter tour.

Next it came to pass, in a climate of an increasingly conservative Home Owners Association (not like the happier previous ones that came to The Grand Salon with glasses and bottles of wine for meetings), that the Victorian element became involved in Castle Green life (I saw them doing something funny by the fountain and pond in front, perhaps donating Koi) and expressed doubts about the, already unappreciated by the HOA, Friends of Castle Green.

The mother of the young Victorian made inquiries about their operation of Tour and finances. The Friends' books were shortly summoned by the HOA  and handed over to the younger Victorian for his perusal though he is a scientist (really) not an accountant, and apparently fell short. I'm sure this was the result of lame bookkeeping, rather than embezzlement, and would have righted itself as none of the money went to anything but the Castle, but it gave the HOA the opening they needed to "fire" the Friends.

Victorians touring our home. Ignore the angry Pomeranian.

When the change of power came it was subtle (if your head was in the sand or you were new to the Castle). It wasn't announced as a changing of the guard, but it could be inferred by reading any of the tour recruitment memos.

Leif isn't a fan of the HOA. He was a member for 2 months, I volunteered him. His disenchantment came when he learned they were holding some meetings without him and other "junior" board members. I was relieved because he'd been acting high and mighty, rather than giving me the inside scoop, maintaining the HOA code of silence. Absolute power corrupts... well, you know.

We are fans of the Friends of Castle Green, it goes beyond floor loyalty to their having been very welcoming to us and having adopted a dog from my weird little dog rescue. We also like them because they contribute "bohemian" to the castle, something that used to have as much weight as  "Victorian". I also just felt bad that someone was taking over an old guy's dream.

Leif is the one who declared we should "boycott". I would have suspected him of trying to get out of cleaning our apartment and talking to strangers all afternoon, but I know he's not an "out with the old" kind of guy. He liked the happy drinking Capotes better than the stiff board who had recently voted out the Castle cat. "Raymond", who used to happily wander the Castle, actually taking the elevator when it opened, to visit other floors.

I love Tour, I like talking to strangers and showing off my belongings, but then I used to be an actress which is pretty much an exhibitionist. That and I liked the pure silliness and chaos of  what I refer to as the "Home Invasion Tour".

I agreed to boycott the Tour, one tour, to make my opinion known (not that anyone was paying attention). When Tour came and members of the public were wandering our halls, I kept to our closed door policy (if we'd opened it people would have streamed in), only stepping out to visit the Capotes similarly holed up on the 4th floor, but with booze.

Outside their door, closed against the touring public, was a sign announcing why they were closed this year and what they'd contributed to the Castle over the past years. I rushed back to our apartment and slithered in (barely opening the door) to get a pen, which I then used to put my signature on their sign "402 (heart sign) the Friends of Castle Green".

I was about to sign the sign on their second door (they, like any who can afford it have 2 apartments in Castle Green, because any 1 is so small), when I noticed "the Victorian" I mentioned earlier and his girlfriend, about to photograph the Capotes' sign, using the less than Victorian technology of a cellphone. I said "Wait, let me sign it first", which they obligingly did.

Then as soon as I finished my signature (I was trying to get the heart to look more like a heart than a blob) it was unceremoniously ripped off the door by the hand of the woman who is the Castle's entire paid event staff. I didn't blame her as I figured she was doing what she'd been paid to, but I was surprised by the martial law of it and said "I support the Castle, but you can't do that." She said, in front of the audience of milling tourers, "How is that supporting the Castle?". I said, in my grand moment, feeling like our founding fathers, "I support the Castle, but I support freedom of speech more!" She walked away with the sign anyway and E----, one of the Capote daughters, put another sign up.

Tour had come and gone and none the wiser (having missed my answers to the standard tour questions) when the HOA put in the front lobby an elaborate printed (presumably for the cost of at least one tourer) poster, declaring the beneficiary of this year's tour.

"Tour funds", I paraphrase, "are to go to replica flags to fly from the Castle's turrets" (water towers). I immediately saw the curb appeal of their plan. It would enhance the fairy princess experience of any bride getting married at the Castle. It will also, if you visualize it on a small scale, make the Castle look a lot like the edifice gracing the holes of a miniature golf course.

The Magic Castle miniature golf course in Dayton, Ohio.