Night Moves

Some local thoughts. I can report that the downtown Artwalk is still a great event, effectively a street party running over a wide area of the city. If in the area, I recommend that you visit it (some upcoming second Thursday of the month) soon. (See earlier posts, e.g., here.) It is all part of the steadily increasing activity that’s going on downtown that I’ve mentioned several times here. It is not just second Thursdays. More businesses are simply opening their doors and people are coming. It’s great. The other night I went with a friend and colleague to try out the beer and sausages at Wurstküche, and had a wonderful time. You can see the cabinet of sausages ready to cook to your order, in the snap to the right. What you probably can’t see is the wide range of flavours on the labels, starting with your traditional hearty German sausages, going through your “gourmet” apple and spiced chicken and so forth, all the way to… rattlesnake and rabbit. On an ordinary Wednesday night, in downtown LA that is still regarded as being dead, it’s simply great to see a huge space full of people chatting, eating and drinking, giving life to the city.

As you may recall, I usually wander over to the Edison from time to time, and so last night, as part of showing around some friends who came along to see the art, hang out, and see downtown, it would have been wrong to not end the evening at the Edison, one of the highlights of downtown’s nightlife. There’s good news there too. It seems that a new group will be playing on Thursday nights for a while, and there’ll be actual jazz involved! DJ Johnny and the Nu Jazz project will play every fortnight on Thursdays. They were great. In fact, I was pleased to recognize the trumpet and sax players as two young guys Roy Hargrove brought on stage to guest on two numbers when he was last in town over at the Catalina late last year. By the way, for those of you whole like feather outfits and so forth, don’t worry! Big Willie’s Burlesque will be still on alternate Thursdays.

And you know one of the best things about all of this? It is all very well connected from many directions (and definitely well interconnected) with public transport. I just walk to the subway or bus and a short while later I’m there. No traffic, no parking, no fuss.

-cvj