We went down to the Chamber of Commerce because it seemed like the thing to do if you’re starting a business. The graffiti on the wall of the parking lot said CRAZYTOWN which seemed vaguely sinister. We’ve been paying a lot more attention to graffiti lately because every time we visit our super-cool new office space there’s more of it painted on the windows. The Chamber of Commerce is this gigantic marble edifice with very few people inside it. So I guess they at least got the Chamber part right. I don’t know exactly what we expected, in fact when we got there we realized that we didn’t even know what the Chamber of Commerce was. There was a sign that said, “bookstore” above a lone spinning rack of books, but all of the books were kind of useless and overpriced to say the least such as the “2002 Directory of California Wholesalers and Service Companies” which was going for $725.00. Maybe that was the Commerce part? The books were all attached to the rack with plastic springs so we couldn’t steal them which was disappointing. Finally I approached the receptionist and said, “My partner and I are starting up a small architecture office and we were wondering, um, what is the chamber of commerce? I mean what do you do?” And she was like, “Oh, Sandy will be able to help you with that question.” Then she got on the phone and started talking to a bunch of people trying to track Sandy down and then she started yelling “Sandy? Sandy are you there?” at the upstairs. Finally it became clear that the only person who could help us was gone, and wouldn’t be back until Thursday, and we’d need an appointment anyway. “Okay,” we told her, “we’ll set one up just as soon as we can.” Later on someone asked me if we had been to the Secretary of State’s office and I realized that that was probably where we meant to go in the first place – but I don’t really know what the Secretary of State does either.
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