In a small dive bar, three-quarters up the steep calle de christo, I was offered a choice. Black sharpie or white out? Stepping down into the first room I felt as though stalactites should hang from the dark ceilings instead of the yellow lamps which illuminated, on every curving wall, what was most striking about the place: decades of names layered in every medium in every font, size, design, from floor to archway, in every room, one one top of, through, obscuring, obliterating or accompanying another. there was not a single stretch of plaster or wood left bare.
