Owner, Gail Hawkins shares the foundation of her interests in artifacts from around the world. Visitors to Ms. Hawkins’ store will find artifacts from Asia, Africa and beyond. During the day, Ms. Hawkins works in the medical field, but uses this local store to share the world with residents in View Park/Windsor Hills
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4421 W Slauson Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90043
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Hi, I’m Jennifer Carter and thank you for joining me on a podcast for parents, teachers, and administrators. Today's conversation should be a good one and I’m sure it's something on your mind. So let's get to it. I just want to thank you, Miss Gail Hawkins, for joining us and or joining me. It won't be us until we play it on the actual podcast. Okay okay. Can you tell me a little bit about how the store came to be a store?
The store came to be a store because years ago I had developed an interest in design, and I was taking some, my husband was had started taking some classes over at Otis school of fine art and design. He wanted to be you know he's in medicine but he wanted another thing, that he wanted to explore his passion. His passion was photography. So he found out there were photography classes in the evening time over at Otis. So he started taking classes and then he knew that I was always interested in design, and he says you know they have a design class why don't you take some classes over there? And I was like oh that sounds interesting and then just happened at the same time. Um I had gotten offered to start a store. Okay. And with a friend um getting uh getting me and another person together to see about opening a small gift store right there and you know in Baldwin Hills. So we decided to go, we sat down we talked, we discussed everything, we decided to do it and then my husband said well this is the perfect thing if you want to take those classes at Otis then I will you know I’ll put the bill and you go take those classes. And I was like whoa hey yeah I’m gonna do it then. You know and it was unbelievable the classes were amazing, I had such a great time, I met such interesting people. And then so once I finished it um I was able to get into the whole thing with the store, because then I felt more comfortable and that I could go into somebody's house and help them design you know a room or a bathroom or something like that or you know bring art into their house and so it just kind of came into being that way so that was the start. Wow how long have you, has the store been there? It's we have had, it first start off it's called was called “Arrivals” and it was started around 1999, 2000. Wow. And then um things kind of went crazy after we had the um after 9 11. Okay. And then we couldn't you know travel as much. And people were really nervous about going back and forth and, so we kind of kept it going and then everything my partner decided that it was not working out between the two of us so we ended up you know splitting. So I decided you know what I’m not going to give up. I am not going to give up. And so I said I can do this I, can handle this by myself. So I renamed the store. Okay. “Cultural Interiors” and we were there for we're probably there about a good four or five years late, more and then what happened is the economy just tanked in 2008, years after in 2008. So we decided hey, you know um this isn't gonna go so we decided to just bag it.