> I live in Los Angeles. Is there a retail store that carries the old
> school, conservative-looking tea pots. The whistling kind that is a basic
> stainless-steel cylinder, rounded at the top, with a conservative handle
> and spout. Not those quasi-futuristic thingamajigs at Target and Crate
> and Barrel, etc...

Have you looked at Target? They sell some fancy ones that they show in
their ads, but when I bought my tea kettle a year or two ago, they had a
wide selection, including some plain ones. The Target web site has
quite a few, and some of them look "plain" to me - there are a couple of
attractive stainless steel ones.

Karen