Waterbed Gallery

The Waterbed Gallery will close its Tustin showroom and consolidate its warehouse operations in an attempt to emerge from bankruptcy protection within a year. The Fullerton-based company, hurt by consumers' reluctance to buy big-ticket items, joined about a half-dozen furniture retailers in Southern California who have filed for bankruptcy in recent months. Waterbed Gallery had already closed a showroom in Canoga Park before it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors on Feb.

The Waterbed Gallery will close its Tustin showroom and consolidate its warehouse operations in an attempt to emerge from bankruptcy protection within a year. The Fullerton-based company, hurt by consumers' reluctance to buy big-ticket items, joined about a half-dozen furniture retailers in Southern California who have filed for bankruptcy in recent months. Waterbed Gallery had already closed a showroom in Canoga Park before it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors on Feb.

There is a 15-year gap on Paul Smith's resume that he reckons will haunt him for the rest of his working life. Smith (not his real name; he asked that it not be used) is an assistant manager of a property maintenance company in Orange County, but for most of the last decade and a half he worked at a variety of tasks such as clerical chores and auto repair.

There are power lunches, power suits and power neckties. But wait, there's a new concept on the horizon . . . a power center. For the uninitiated not up on the latest newspeak, a power center is not a shelter where recalcitrant consumers are hooked up to electrodes and zapped until all their plastic is melted into an unusable heap.

Remember the first time you heard about water beds, back in the '60s? The people who sold them were screaming, with a straight face, about what a great night's sleep you'd get if you bought one. The liquid mattress would conform lovingly to every contour of your body and you'd undulate your way into dreamland on gently rolling swells. It was, they said unapologetically, the wave of the future. Of course that was pretty hilarious back then.