California Printers — West Coast Melting Pot
• Tack on an extra five minutes, and Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and the rest of your Disneyland pals are at your disposal.
• In just 45 minutes, you can be catching rays on the world famous Venice or Malibu beaches.
• An hour’s drive can mean dirt biking in the high desert or snow skiing.
“The entertainment world becomes very small when you live in Southern California,” Megerdichian remarks. “I was at a gas station in Burbank and, across from my car, Jay Leno was pumping gas. Or eating at a restaurant, and seeing Kevin Costner or Sidney Portier sitting next to you.”
This part of the state is definitely a bit off center, but is among the most favorite destinations in the world. The care-free attitude is sometimes mistaken for a lack of intensity. But make no mistake about it, there’s hardly a boring day in the life out west.
“I have hundreds of stories about flakes and dreamers who have come through our plant in the last 30 years,” notes Jeff Sweetman, principal of Trend offset Printing in Los Alamitos. “We had a lady back in the 1990s who put up her jet skis as collateral for a print job. Unfortunately, we had to keep them.”
During the fabulous 1980s, Mediterranean fruit flies were everywhere and malathion was being used to wipe them out, Sweetman notes. One enterprising comedian thought it would be a riot to publish a book of recipies on how to prepare fruit fly dishes. The jokester found a publisher, but not a home with readers.
“Needless to say, it was a disgusting book and a lousy idea with bad timing as airplanes flew over our houses at night spraying malathion,” Sweetman remarks. “We ended up with 40,000 med fly cook books for about four years in our warehouse. Nobody wanted to read them.”
