Walking into musician/guitar repairman Geoff Benge‘s Lakeview home was what I imagine it would be like to drop by Don Draper’s place. That is, if Don Draper were a rocker instead of an ad man.
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Benge greeted me in the foyer of a dentist’s office and led me up a long and winding stairwell walled with Mondrianesque Formica paneling. (“Obviously, some madman designed every bit of that,” Benge commented.) Several blue-shag-carpeted steps later, I arrived in a midcentury-modern shrine: a living room with floor-to-ceiling windows, the “curtains” large paneled mirrors hanging on tracks; a soffit ceiling done in white and baby-blue paneling; and blue-and-gold-patterned carpeting that could make a HoJo interior designer blush. I couldn’t help but breathe out a slightly audible “WTF?”
After a tour of the main floor (“tour” more accurately described as “acid trip”) I asked about the music that had been filtering down from the floor above. We headed upstairs into Benge’s rehearsal/recording space, originally designed to be a separate apartment. Local band King Apathy continued rehearsing as Benge showed me the Pullman kitchenette and revealed a fridge from behind a lit sliding glass door. “There’s a very James Bond-style, push-the-button-fridge-pops-open-thing goin’ on. It still works great.”
In addition to fixing guitars and playing in the band Grand Prixx, Benge is beginning a monthly video webcast, “‘Live from the Honeycomb Hideout,” against the backdrop of this retro pad. “Since I live in the Merv Griffin set, I might as well use it,” he said.
