WHENEVER I STROLL along the sidewalk to make a beer run to Bristol Farms, I often pass by a strange little store conspicuously wedged between the oil smeared lot of an automotive shop and an upscale crepe and coffee shop. The neon sign posted on the side mirrors of the store advertises its prophetic claim of what its services can achieve – an insight into your future. When I pass by this shop I’m reminded of David Fine’s comments of the psychics and radical spiritualists that have come to form LA’s unique, if not strange, spiritual landscape and its part in constructing LA’s identity: “One would be hard pressed to find a Los Angeles novel written between the 1920s and the 1960s without the inclusion of a bizarre cult, spiritualist, prophet, or medical quack. While it is tempting to exaggerate their significance in the city’s history . . . their centrality to the city’s fiction cannot be denied. Spiritualists and ‘psychic consultants’ (Raymond Chandler’s term) have been permanent and conspicuous residents in the fiction about Los Angeles…In the literary construction of the city, the charlatans and cults signal the fusion, or confusion, of reality and illusion, fact and fantasy, that has been one of the recurring themes of Los Angeles fiction.”
This elicits several philosophical questions to debate and consider. Is LA a city that is starved and deprived of traditional forms of spirituality that it indulges itself in the world of mystics? 
same mystics and spiritualists gave rise to so many different religious cults that prospered in the LA area such as Theosophy movement and the Four Square Gospel? Or is it a city that likes its spirituality peddled to them like everything else is on large billboards and page long ads in the paper? After all Miss Cleo was not the first or the last psychic that offered services to those desperate to seek out an answer, an epiphany, a secure knowledge of their future. This shop is but one among many that are no doubt strewn across the city of Los Angeles as sites that often blur the lines between illusion and reality.
If I was a psychic consultant, I wonder what would my sales pitch be?
“Are you uncertain about life’s big decisions? My crystal ball has all the answers.”
“A doctor can heal your body but I can heal your soul…for a small fee.”
“You want to find the love of your life? No pain. No hassles. No time wasted. I can help you find the one.”
“I can guide you to your utopia.”
--Thomas Kim
