In our Strip Mall of the Month feature, writer Rico Gagliano picks a random L.A. shopping plaza and reports back on the hidden treasures found therein.
Autographed celebrity photos are an interior-decor standby at L.A.âs dry cleaners. Typically what youâll find is a smattering of character actors, recognizable mainly to viewers of soap operas, along with an A-lister or two. Once, at a Mid-City cleaners, I noticed Arnold Schwarzeneggerâs signed photo over in a corner next to some local TV news reporterâs. The joint down the street from my apartment has a rakish-looking John Cho stapled to the wood paneling over the counter, along with a half-dozen lesser-known faces.
I find these displays poignant and beautifulâthe humble, everyman version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Anyone with a headshot and some acting credits can end up beside a star.
The proprietors of Celebrity Cleaners, located in a strip mall on Hillhurst Avenue in Los Feliz, are among the kings of the practice. For years their display of dozens of autographed headshots blanketed an entire wall of the store. When they remodeled three years ago, management took the game into the computer age by digitizing the entire collection and displaying it on a flatscreen TV in a continuously looping slideshow. Faces, both familiar and obscure, crossfade silently, one into the other.
Recently, I stopped in to speak with the shopâs genial owner and manager, George Afifi. âI donât have a favorite photo,â he told me at one point. âTheyâre my customers. I treat them the same way, whether theyâre celebrities or not. Every customer, for me, is a celebrity.â
 So first of all, how many autographs do you have, total?
Close to a hundred.
And are all of those from actual clients?
Yes, mostly clients.
Do you ask them for their autographs or do they just give them to you?
Ninety percent of the time I ask them, because I recognize them. Some of them, after a few times coming, they introduce themselves. Or one of my other customers says, âOh! This is that person,â you know? So I ask for a picture, and then they bring it the next time they come in.
 Who was the first one, do you remember?
Oh no, I donât remember. That was 29 years ago.
Is that when you started this place?
Yes. My wife started this business. Then I started helping her. Now sheâs retired and Iâm doing the whole job now.
And you get to meet all the cool famous people.
Yes, yes, yes! She started collecting the pictures, but now I do it.
 Which is the most famous autograph you have, do you think?
WellâŚ[he pauses a long time, watching the celebrity photographs scroll by] Oh! Tim Curry! Tim Curry.
When did you get TimâŚwhoa, did I just see a photo of Rob Reiner?
Yes. But Tim Curry, I got him maybe 15 or 17 years ago.
I guess that was back when he was doing the miniseries It on TV.*
No, Home Alone, I think.**
What did Tim Curry bring in to get dry cleaned?
[Laughs]Â Ahâeverything! Whatever he wears.
I just imagine him having makeup on his collars a lot, âcause I think of him from Rocky Horror and as the clown in It.
Sometimes he might have, yeah. Thatâs why people bring their clothes here; because weâre good and we can get makeup out. [Looking up at the screen]Ohâthereâs Barry! From the show Storage.
Oh yeah! Barry [Weiss], the guy with the glasses from Storage Wars.
Storage Wars, yes. He still comes in here. [To an employee:] Who else still comes in here? Oh, Drake Bell does, the singer. He was on a Nickelodeon show. Thatâs for kids, thoughâwe donât watch, we donât watch! [Laughs]Â And also Zaillian.
Steve Zaillian, the great screenwriter [Schindlerâs List, Searching for Bobby Fischer]?
Yes. I have his picture but I didnât put it on the video yet.
And thereâs you standing with somebody.
Thatâs me with Avo, the big cigar guy.
I donât know who that is.
He was a cigar distributor.
[Unimpressed] Oh.*** You have several shots with the guy who played âBig Pussyâ on The Sopranos [Vincent Pastore].
Sopranos, yeah!
He comes in here?
Uh, noâI met him in Las Vegas, I think. Thatâs why I said mostly the pictures are of clients! The others are like that, where maybe I met them in Vegas during a dry cleaning trade show, or other trade shows I go to.
Big Pussy was at a dry cleaning trade show?
No, I was there for the show, and he happened to be at the hotel. He was playing blackjack at some table. I went up to him, we start talking, we played. My wife, she was there, and the picture is me, my wife, and him. I got Sherman Hemsleyâs photo at a trade show, though.
Sherman Hemsley from The Jeffersons! His character George was a dry cleaner, right?
Yeah. That was at a show in Vegas or New Orleans, Iâm not sure. [Laughs] He was a guest of the dry cleaning show! Every two years comes a big show in New Orleans, Vegas, or New York. And usually I go to see new equipment, new machines, meet new people. And I met him over there.
Was he a speaker, or just there signing photos?
For fun he was there, just signing pictures.
I see Paul Lynde up there, from Hollywood Squares. He was a client?
Yes. Heâs passed away.
Did he have his print shirts cleaned here? I remember him having amazing shirts on that show. If you cleaned those thatâs like handling a piece of history.
I think so. If he was wearing it, then we cleaned it.
They would have been brightly colored.
For sure.
AndâŚis that Oprah?!
Yeah, Oprah, but she doesnât come here. The guy standing next to Oprahâhe was a customer.
Is that her husband or her friend, or�
Friend, maybe. I guess. [Laughs] One of the famous guys who hang around Hollywood peopleâI donât know! He brought that to me.
These photos used to be physically on the wall, right?
Yes. But now everything is digital. Because after 30 years of hanging on the wall, the pictures were getting faded. The color was changing, the frames were getting broken from the sun, from the heat. Even the signatures were starting to get faded. We decided, âIn another ten yearsââand I am gonna be here in another ten yearsââThese photos, youâre not gonna be able to see anything!â This way, at least, everything stays fresh.
Oh thereâs Max Perlich, the character actor! I loved him in Drugstore Cowboy.
 And thereâs Paul, the standup comedian! PaulâŚuhâŚI canât remember some of the last names, or some of the first names! [Gestures to screen] Thereâs Cynthia McFadden. She used to work on ABC, I believe. She was here during the O.J. Simpson trial, covering from the courtroom. She used to come here. But after, she moved to New York. Sheâs there now.
She hosted Nightline for a while. Did you talk to her about the O.J. trial, while it was happening?
No, no, of course not. I didnât care.
You didnât care? Everybody cared!
Not me. You know, you donât discuss politics with the customersâthatâs the number one rule. My father taught me: donât be involved with the politics. Not with your friends, with your brother, even. No politics.
If you could get one celebrity to add their photo to your collection, who do you wish it would be?
Clint Eastwood. I like his Westerns.
I think he lives up north.
 Carmel, yeah.
Maybe heâll read this and come down with a suit or something.
Sure, Iâm here.
* Totally wrongâABC aired It in 1990.
** Also wrongâHome Alone 2 came out in 1992.
*** After the interview, a quick internet search revealed âAvoâ to be the late Lebanese-born jazz pianist and entrepreneur Avo Uvezian. Who not only sold the distribution rights to his Avo-brand cigars to Davidoff for an estimated $10 million bucks, but also claimed he wrote the original music to the Sinatra hit âStrangers In the Night.â Thereâs a lot of history to be found on a dry cleanerâs wall. Or video screen.
RELATED: Searching for L.A.âs Best Thai Soup in a San Fernando Valley Strip Mall Called Armenia
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