My ship has sails that are made of Pearl...

Was so bummed to hear today that Pearl Art and Craft on Market is closing (across the street from the Warfield for you musicophiles). Pearl made up a good part of my youthful desire to create. When I was in school - it was the end of the rainbow for anything my crazy professors might send us looking for. They seemed to have a cornucopia of magic spilling off its shelves in a colorful array of tools. It was where the "real" artists in the city went to shop. The store that would have the obscure inks or tools that I was looking for. Not the pristinely sanitized mod white spaces of Utrecht or the overpriced Marin hobbyist store that is all that Flax stands for; Pearl was the real nitty gritty. Where you could find etching tools and amazing pressed papers from places like Fiji and France. Sable hair brushes, huge Japanese boar head brushes. Every tool or supply you could ever think of were held 'neath the walls of this three tiered giant. If you learned to navigate its hearty walls - you were a king. Hours could pass and you would emerge with infinitely valuable treasures. It was the Berkeley Bowl West of art stores. Just as affordable and just as varied. And now it's gone.

Blick is supposedly coming into replace. But it will never replace my beloved Pearl. I suppose it's just a sign of the times. When are we going to start appreciating what we can create with our own two hands again?

When?