Jimmie dashed off a quick hello from the California coast in October 1934, choosing this gloriously rendered linen view of the brand-new Avalon Casino on Catalina Island — its enormous circular Art Deco drum of cream-colored concrete capped in terracotta red and ringed with snapping American flags, jutting dramatically into the Pacific on its own rocky promontory. "Hello Kid," he writes to his friend B.A. in Denver, "This is one of the places you will have to see. The dance floor is up stairs. Jan Garber's old hang out. Received your letter, will write soon." Jan Garber, the popular bandleader known as the "Idol of the Air-Lanes," was indeed a fixture at the Casino Ballroom, making this a rare piece of documented popular-music history on a postcard. The Casino — which never housed gambling but always housed wonder — opened in 1929 and became one of the premier big-band venues in America, its broadcasts carried nationwide on radio. Mailed from Long Beach, California, October 8, 1930 [postmark reads 1934], franked with a green 1-cent Franklin stamp.