Courtesy of Dan and Laura Dotson

Dan and Laura Dotson

Creatives is a new recurring column about creative people in L.A. following their passions.

If one man's trash is another man's treasure, then Dan and Laura Dotson are the guides who bring it all together.

The married team of licensed auctioneers owns American Auctioneers in Riverside. Dan Dotson learned the business from his grandfather, a cattle and farm auctioneer from the Ozarks. He fell in love with Laura after they exchanged smiles at -- where else -- auction houses. (She'd come to bid on restaurant equipment.) He trained her, and now they travel the country, hosting about 3,000 auctions a year. They also monitor storage auctions through their website, StorageTreasures.com.

But to reality TV aficionados, Dan and Laura, 49 and 43, respectively, are the good-natured, fast-talking folks who keep things moving on A&E's Storage Wars.

More >>

Tanja Stark

David Bowie mannequin by Tanja Stark

There's no shortage of toys and merchandise based on celebrities floating around the Internet, but some are a bit more unusual than others. In the designer toy and art toy world, artists turn recognizable figures into vinyl characters and mash them up with other pop culture references into amazing sculpts. Inspired by a recent trip to Melrose Avenue shop Toy Art Gallery, here's a smattering of toys that go far beyond the classic celebrity Barbies.

More >>

Courtesy of Marianne Williams Photography

Meaghan Monster models Dapper Cadaver

See also "10 Oddball L.A. Museums Worth Seeing"

Looking for a book about the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society? Perhaps you need a Jolly Roger doormat for the house. Maybe you just want to pick up some time-travel-sickness pills, a spray bottle of barbarian repellant or a few fresh dinosaur eggs before you blast to the past. Whatever your needs, Los Angeles is definitely not lacking in the quirky-shop department.

Our city's diverse population and its reputation as an arts metropolis give local merchants plenty of opportunity to sell unusual goods. Since many stores are independently owned, most of them don't just reflect unique tastes -- they are physical manifestations of someone's life work.

Like the Eagle Rock Rock and Eagle Shop, some stores are temporary pop-ups, while others, such as the L.A. County Coroner's Skeletons in the Closet and the Bodhi Tree metaphysical bookstore, have packed up and moved online (though Bodhi Tree's new owners plan to open a new location).

But a few brick-and-mortar gems continue to offer a selection of weird material, affording Angelenos a kind of public-art experience while promoting an overall creative mission. Here are 10 of our favorite strange boutiques.

More >>

Bettina Hubby

The eagle side of the Rock and Eagle Shop

Last Saturday, less than a week after she opened the Rock and Eagle Shop on Eagle Rock Boulevard, artist and curator Bettina Hubby heard a man outside the door. "I'm just going to make sure it's not just an adult rock and eagle shop," he said to his children.

The exterior is painted a bright, pot-dispensary green, and the store's name is written in a graffiti-like font, so it's hard to know what to expect. But when the man walked in and saw shelves of rock and eagle paraphernalia -- eagle magnets, eagle do-rags and other eagle-related stuff to the left, and pet rocks, sling shots and rock-related stuff to the right -- he dashed out to get the kids.

More >>

Ted Soqui

Ashley Ross, left, and Lindsay Klimitz at the Colony Nightclub with their shoe vending machine.

Salvation has come to the high-heeled hordes of L.A. nightlife, in the form of the city's first flat-shoe vending machine. Squat, unobtrusive, the size of a dresser, the thing is currently located beside the women's restroom at the Colony in Hollywood.

"We did six or seven pairs last week, not a whole lot," says distributor Ashley Ross, glancing brightly at the machine. "But it's still early. We're a little bit new to the L.A. scene. This is the first of many, is the plan."

It's a Thursday night at the club, and Ross and business partner Lindsay Klimitz are restocking shoes. Called Rollasoles, they cost $19.95 (or "an easy $20"). They are basically ballet flats. Soft and squashy, they drop out of the machine rolled up in a plastic can.

"The first time we came to L.A., we had no idea the streets were so bad," Klimitz says, popping cans into the machine.

More >>

Ashley Marie Manzo/Taxidermy Her Bones

When Ashley Marie Manzo was a child, her father took her to Necromance, the Melrose Avenue store filled with specimen jars, bones and macabre trinkets. She loved it, but many years had passed before she visited the store again. Then, three years ago, she returned to the shop.

"I fell in love with it all over again," says the up-and-coming artist from Boyle Heights.

Manzo bought a frog in a specimen jar and it launched an obsession. She began scouring swap meets and web stores for more animal remains. Now, the 21-year-old says she's acquired about 17 specimen jars, 30 skulls and 100 bones.

"Other people collect comic books," says Manzo. "I collect skulls and bones."

More >>

Gendy Alimurung

After four decades as Los Angeles' unofficial spiritual/metaphysical hub, the Bodhi Tree Bookstore closed its doors at 5:30 p.m. this past New Years' Eve.

Co-owner and co-founder Stan Madson, in a red beret, shook hands and accepted thanks from customers old and new, celebrities and non-celebs, authors and readers, believers and doubters alike. People hugged him and confessed that the Bodhi Tree was the first bookstore they ever connected with. They'd miss it, they said. They'd miss the books and camaraderie and incense and free herbal tea.

Then they got in line -- a huge line that snaked around the entire store -- to buy books for 90% off.

More >>

At first, the idea of a three-hundred page cultural history of dirty magazines seems quaint, like somebody writing a book-length ode to the telegram. After all, it's been a long time since Playboy stood for anything other than bad reality TV, and you couldn't purchase a Penthouse right now if you tried. Not that you would, of course. At least not if you've got a few free minutes and a decent wireless connection.

But if somebody were to come up with a biography of the dirty magazine industry, it wouldn't hurt if s/he had once upon a time contributed to a few of those magazines himself. Say a big mainstream glossy like Hustler and then, for street cred, an indie weekly like Screw. Toss in authorship of a couple dozen pornographic novels and a few Penthouse bylines, and you've got the perfect candidate. Add a stint as publisher of outsider hobbyist mag High Times -- famous for publishing marijuana leaf "centerfolds" -- and you've got Mike Edison, author of Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! Of Playboys, Pigs and Penthouse Paupers: An American Tale of Sex and Wonder, who's appearing at The Last Bookstore to sign his book on Nov. 17.

More >>

Brendan A. Murray

Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School

Santa's workshop came early this year DesignerCon. On Saturday, Exhibit Hall A at the Pasadena Convention Center temporarily turned into a pop-up, pop-art fair and toy market filled with commercial designers and design fans alike.

A group of artists and toy-makers first created the Vinyl Toy Network in 2006. Since re-dubbed DesignerCon, the yearly fair now not only opens its doors to toy artists and retailers, but the public, too -- just in time for the pre-holiday season, mad-buying rush.

More >>

L.J. Williamson

$380 Worth Of Joy

​Is Missoni in line to become the next Ed Hardy?

The well-established Italian fashion house's special Target line of clothing and housewares debuted this morning, on the same day I needed to hit the store for an early-morning toilet paper run, and zigzags were flying off the shelves at a record rate. Said one battle-weary cashier, "I've never seen anything like this, except maybe at Christmastime."

More >>