Another Melrose Place -- Golden Age Retirement Hotel Residents Can't Relate To Show's Glitz

LOS ANGELES - Look. See what a high value is placed on the aged here on one of this city's trendiest shopping strips, Melrose Avenue.

Old cowboy boots: $295 a pair.

Old Hamilton wrist watch: $425.

Old rocking chair by Stickley Bros.: $4,500.

Old wine, old Tiffany lamps, old Levi's and old books are also here and dear.

Old people, however, are in short supply. There's really only one place to find them smack dab amidst all these clothing shops and Thai restaurants and adult toy stores and their taut buttocked patrons.

Cross the street at Johnny Rocket's, a restaurant made up to look like a 1950s burger joint. Look for the patio carpeted with green plastic grass, and the chained-together lawn chairs.

Welcome to the Golden Age Retirement Hotel.

A clock in the lobby is stuck on 3:35. The all-in-one stereo is stuck in the '70s, its eight-track player loaded with a tape by Sonny & Cher. The aquarium is filled with water, but no fish. The upright piano is missing half its ivories.

This is one place on Melrose you won't see on "Melrose Place." That show was built for teen and twentyish viewers who live in a neighborhood paved by Cosmo magazine-style dreams.

Few residents of the Golden Age Retirement Hotel have ever watched the show.

"The old people have other concerns," says Sol Feiner, the 38-year-old co-owner whose father built this retirement home. "Bowel movements. What's for dinner."

Today's menu: vegetable soup; chicken soup; chicken; turkey; mashed potatoes; vegetable; fruit salad; bread; tea; coffee. Unlike the rest of Melrose, not a blade of lemon grass to be found.

Today's entertainment: "exercise and human interest," according to the activity schedule. Human interest-wise, there's also the colorful parade of humanity that every day, all day passes on the sidewalk out front.

A woman - we think - sashays by, wearing a leopard-print leotard. Then a skinny black man, shirtless, carrying a gold-headed walking stick. Another woman follows, with unnaturally red hair and a snake tattoo.

An 80-year-old resident named Ruth Zitomer takes it in through the lobby's wall of windows.

"I've stopped being amazed," she says, adjusting her gray gauzy babushka. "The way they walk around half-naked. Exposed."

The Golden Age Retirement Hotel houses about 70 residents, Feiner says. Most are between 60 and 108 years old.

In a brief interview, Feiner wanders from a description of the hotel to an analysis of the Biblical explanation of depression, to a general indictment of modern mores, Los Angeles' in particular, to his childhood memories of this neighborhood.

"I remember Melrose," Feiner says, "when you could roll a bowling ball down the street and not hit anybody."

Things picked up a half dozen years or so ago. A hair salon and restaurant were among the first signs of new life.

We find another watcher, Sara Wine, 80, a former manicurist with plump arms and bright orange polished fingernails. She leans on a walker slung with a plastic bag that contains her personal bottle of ketchup.

She has lived here 12 years. "I see what goes by," Sara says, her accent Bostonian. "Punk hair and blue hair and half yellow and half green. They're not going to have any hair before they're 40 and they won't know why."

The punk influence appears to have abated, judging by the Melrose strollers. More common are the baggy trousers, untucked long T-shirts and multi-hued baseball caps indicative of what's known as rave wear. Raves are all-night parties featuring psychedelic light shows and pounding dance grooves.

Another woman, Ilon Davis, joins the gallery. She has seen buses pull up, filled with Japanese tourists who want to walk the length of this avenue they have heard so much about.

Davis, who has since moved from the Golden Age to a convalescent center, repeats a question asked of her. "How old am I?" she says in her thick Eastern European accent. "You tell me."

She says she was born in 1904. Sometime nearer to then than now, in Minneapolis, she raised three children alone by teaching dance lessons.

"Foxtrot, waltz, rumba, Lindy. . . everything you can think of." She once won a Charleston contest. Now it is difficult for her to find a partner.

She keeps a TV in her room, but seldom watches. "I thought `The Waltons' was so nice," she sighs.

A Torah pendant dangles from her neck; a cane rests on her chair. "I like to watch people my own age, to see how they're getting on. But there is no such thing on TV."

A man wearing brown slacks and Adidas sneakers shuffles up. "Be very careful," he warns. "She is a very dangerous woman."

Joe Kalmen smiles a sly smile. His wispy moustache, as thin as the kind you'd get from drinking a glass of milk, almost disappears.

Under Kalmen's Twist-o-Flex-style watch band is wedged a folded slip of paper; it eases the squeeze of the band. Parkinson's disease makes his hand shake like an idling truck.

There is little room for TV-watching in Kalmen's daily regimen. "News. After news the `Wheel of Fortune.' After that `Jeopardy.' After that, finished." He likes to be in bed by 8, and up by 4:30 each morning to read the newspaper.

A young man walks by wearing black tights, silver-studded jewelry and black eye makeup. A young woman's jeans are covered with daisy appliques.

Melrose Avenue reminds Kalmen of a street in the city where he was born 82 years ago.

"People were walking up and down. Strangers. Tourists. Shoes. Boutiques. Sidewalk cafes. Everything. They would come because the prices were so low. Not here."

The street was in Budapest. Though he and Ilon Davis have known each other for some time at the Golden Age, this information surprises her. Budapest? She also was born in Budapest!

"How dare you be born the same place I was born!" she says in mock horror.

"You were not born!" Kalmen replies. "You were found in a rose bush!"

They laugh. Outside, on Melrose, the parade continues.

Last summer, the producers of "Melrose Place" blocked the street and threw a party. As part of the decorations, the Golden Age Retirement Hotel sign was covered, and most of the windows were blocked by big potted trees.

Kalmen had to retire to his second-floor room to get a view.

"People, people, people," he remembers. "Young people dancing. It was very interesting. So many people doing nothing."