The Palm Springs Walk of Stars – which has basically been, up until now, kind of a farce – was the focus of a nice article in Today’s Desert Sun by Barrett Newkirk, a writer who demands your retweets! While the whole story is really worth your time, there was one part of it that really stood out to me.
It all has to do with the cost of obtaining one of the stars, which is 10 grand (half that if you are friends with Nachhattar Chandi), and where that money goes according to Walk of Stars President Bob Alexander (emphasis by me):
From the $10,000 payment for a star, a little more than half goes to cover direct expenses like the $1,000 to manufacture each star, $1,000 that goes to the city, and all of the details tied to the events, Alexander said. The rest goes to the nonprofit, which pays him and other business expenses. It also covers maintenance overseen by the nonprofit.
The stars are cleaned weekly as part of the city’s routine sidewalk care. The nonprofit pays to have them steam cleaned twice a month and repainted every year, Alexander said.
Ummm, so how about we get into the Palm Springs star steam cleaning business, yeah? Not only does it seem like a nice, consistent stream of revenue, but keeping the stars clean will probably be viewed by the Walk of Stars committee as a “humanitarian” act – which would be deemed worthy of all of us getting our own stars too (which we would also get paid to steam clean twice a month).
