View from corner of Hawthorne and Torrance

Daily Breeze columnist John Bogert settled in to the paper's new location with a column that hints at the glamorous life of a South Bay scribe. In one scene, he gets the evil eye from a woman in the lobby where the Breeze new rents office space. He figures it's because he resembles a newspaper schlub.

That is to say, when I came in on Monday morning carrying my cardboard box full of reporterly junk (pens missing their caps, half-filled note pads, a bottle opener, a 1936 dictionary and a toothbrush because dental health is just as important as maintaining the First Amendment's sharp edge), I noticed a definite chill.

Well maybe not a chill exactly, but the first person I saw in the lobby was a splendidly dressed briefcase-carrying woman of the blonde persuasion who looked at me like somebody who was maybe there delivering that cardboard box instead of owning it....

So maybe I only imagined giving this quite beautiful woman consent to make me feel inferior and not because of my two major talents, writing columns and changing light bulbs.

No, I felt inferior because I was dressed like Johnny reporter. No, worse, a guy who had happened into an office building populated with people who seem to care about their appearance. In short, even the short men I saw were shaved and suited while I looked like I'd come to fix the elevator.

Bogert sits in a street-level window where the public can watch him work, should they choose.