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The Parties, the Punks and the Past
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| The Hong Kong Cafe in Chinatown was a focal point of the 1980s Downtown punk rock scene. Photo by Gary Leonard. |
In the 1980s, Long Before the Bars and Supper Clubs, Downtown Had a Thriving Nightlife Scene
by Anthea Raymond
Long before the tony elegance of the Standard, the Edison, J Lounge and Blue Velvet brought attention to the Downtown nightlife scene, there was another generation of after-hours entertainment. While largely forgotten by current crowds, who wait in long lines to get in bars to pay up to $10 for a drink, these lofts, warehouses, garages - and sometimes licensed bars and clubs - helped open up Downtown in the early 1980s.
I lived in South Santa Monica at the time. I would go Downtown sometimes, to get my hair cut over a bathtub in the loft of an aspiring clothing designer. Or maybe I'd see a screening hosted by Film Forum at the Wallenboyd Theater.
The streets literally burned at night. In certain areas the homeless warmed themselves over fires lit in trash cans. It was scary. Frequently you felt unsafe, even in a car.
The few full-time residents would have parties and invite one another. Friends' bands would play. Soon, word of the parties spread, and they grew bigger, attracting folks from other parts of town.
"That's when we stopped going," says Carol Colin. But others didn't. Some even paid their rent by throwing an occasional party and charging outsiders.
Colin moved Downtown in 1979, leasing a building at Omar and Boyd streets. She and her partner Ted Waltz were both artists and lived above their gallery, Oranges Sardines. It was among the first of the art spaces to open Downtown. Today, the area counts more than 60 galleries.
"Don't forget the benefits. They were an important part of the scene," says Colin. Oranges Sardines hosted several. They featured music and the then-new medium performance art.
Colin remembers a benefit for Amnesty International, with an early gig by the now legendary Minutemen. "They were very raw and fabulous," says Colin.
"Some of the best parties were the loading dock parties held outside during the summer," adds photographer Raymond Y. Newton, who still lives Downtown. "Bands would use truck loading docks at abandoned warehouses as a stage and hundreds of people would show up."
Punk and new wave clubs had also begun to emerge. They opened first at the edges of Downtown.
The Vex was across the Los Angeles River, in Boyle Heights, at Brooklyn and Gage. Every other Friday, from March to November of 1980, East L.A. punkers, many of them Latino, played in the open, wood-floored space.
The Vex was on the second floor of Self-Help Graphics, a Chicano community arts organization still around today. Visual artist Diane Gamboa started to take photos there.
"It was an art center by day and a nightclub by night," Gamboa says. "Artists would come up from the studio below. The building had been there for so long. It had magic - and ghosts."
Bands like Thee Undertakers (a play on East L.A. predecessor Thee Midnighters), Why Nut? and The Brat called the Vex home base. But Self Help shut down the Vex after a riotous Black Flag concert ended in vandalism.
Chinatown Scene
Soon, East L.A. bands were crossing the bridges to Downtown. One of their first stops was the Garage, in what today is the Arts District.
"The Garage attracts a seething crowd on the weekends," wrote club critic Billy "Eye" Bennight at the time. "Don't be surprised by what you see, or who you see, doing what in the dark. The place is hardcore."
The first Garage didn't last long, plagued by noise and permit problems. It reopened a few years later as a pre-rave dance club.
In Chinatown, meanwhile, Madame Wong's East and The Hong Kong Café were holding their ground.
To make rent, Esther Wong started letting bands play in her nearly empty Chinese restaurant. Soon, the place was busy every night. Over the years, a lot of big name acts played Wong's, including an early version of Guns N' Roses and the Police.
Some criticized the club for demanding that artists guarantee a crowd, often by re-selling a certain number of tickets, a common practice at Hollywood clubs.
Madame Wong's later expanded west to Santa Monica. That helped bring the club wider attention.
The Hong Kong Café staged mostly punk and performance art. The room was smaller, holding less than a hundred people.
"I remember catching the J. Giles Band at Madame Wong's East and then walking over to see Thee Undertakers and The Brat the same night at the Hong Kong Café," says Gamboa, underscoring the difference between the two clubs.
The Hong Kong was where Jack Marquette first heard Hey Taxi! Renamed RedWedding, the group became the house band at the Brave Dog. Marquette and a partner opened the "salon" in late 1980 in a renovated storefront on First Street, just west of Alameda.
"A large regular audience of all sexual preferences came to hear and see what we offered and liked. They weren't a bunch of 'fans' drawn to see a particular 'act' they had already heard before," he says.
"Only about 1,000 square feet, it was rated for an occupancy of 60. A small back patio opening to a large parking lot made the place seem larger than it was," Marquette adds.
The Brave Dog never got a liquor license. It hid under the guise of a "private parties" establishment for much of its life, offering all the beer you could drink for $5 entry.
But LAPD undercover officers shut the place down in April 1982.
From Al's to Gorky's
Marquette moved on to run another club, Olympic. Many years later, he booked Al's Bar, which had also opened in late 1980 at 305 S. Hewitt St. in the Arts District.
The graffiti-scarred walls and high ceilings at Al's didn't make for great sound. But that didn't matter. "Al's had a solid, straight regular audience of local artists who played
pool no matter what was on stage," says Marquette.
What was on stage was an eclectic mix of all music and performance, the best of the Downtown scene and the hippest out-of-town acts. Art students and artists lived upstairs in the American Hotel, ensuring a steady clientele. Al's lasted well into the 1990s.
Often after shows, folks would roll over to nearby Gorky's. The all-night cafe didn't start out as a music venue, but it happened.
"Neighborhood folks would bring instruments and play and that too evolved into eventually an every-night-music sort of thing," says Judith Hansen, who founded Gorky's. "On Sunday nights I would make a Russian dinner and we had great Russian musicians. The place was mobbed."
The cafe had opened at Eighth and San Julian streets in November 1982, with a nod to the early 20th century Russian avant-garde, in a clean white space with exposed pipes and simple lines. The Gorky's sign is still there today.
Another establishment that had late-night legs with the music crowd was the Atomic Café, at the site of today's Seńor Fish at First and Alameda streets.
"Recovery from any late night venue inevitably led you to the Atomic Café," says Marquette. "It rocked a wicked jukebox until about 4 a.m. Good food - I fondly remember Go-Go Chicken - but a few too many stylish punky junkies for my liking."
Photographer Newton went to the Atomic often.
"Nancy, the waitress, was in the band Hiroshima," he recalls. "She was the daughter of the owner, and more or less did whatever she wanted. She set up all the songs on the jukebox, and it was great. The place had an Asian-punk vibe."
Dance Takes Over
By 1984, Downtown regularly attracted nighttime visitors from all over the city. Punk and New Wave had given way to electronic dance music. Clubs melding fashion, music and performance sprung up.
Many were illegal. Promoters scouted out empty buildings and tapped power lines for one night only. Or they would rent a loft for a "photo shoot."
One of the biggest clubs was Plastic Passion, attracting as many as 1,400 people. Regina O'Brien and her three partners ran the club. She was finishing art school at UCLA and made enough to pay for her degree.
"I was very inspired by the art scene here and in New York, especially DNA, which was an outrageous theme club, and gave us the 'theme' idea," says O'Brien.
O'Brien's favorites included Helmut Newton Night - with the designer in attendance - and Alice in Wonderland Night. A regular crew of artists and models helped out with conception and staging each week.
Richard Lange, author of the recent novel Dead Boy Stories, dispersed flyers for the club. "I'd go to the previous week's location and hand out a flyer with that week's address. I'd stand there all night."
In its final months, Plastic Passion moved to old hotels, with abandoned ballrooms and, ideally, liquor licenses.
Lange says one night he tended a bar set up in an elevator. It was ready to drop a floor if the fire marshal or police showed.
Plastic Passion lasted about a year. Clubs and parties with names like Dirt Box and Scream followed.
Julie Rico, who today runs Weeneez Gallery, remembers hosting loft parties at her first Downtown space in 1988. But eventually, AIDS and the rise of real estate prices put the first wave of Downtown nightlife to rest.
Shades of the Past
Today, many in the original scene might not recognize what Downtown Los Angeles nightlife has become. Rundown spaces have received multi-million dollar upgrades and host bars and lounges such as the Edison, in the basement of the Higgins Building, and J Restaurant & Lounge, in South Park. Supper clubs and celebrity sightings are routine.
Still, some observers do see shades of the old Downtown in the new Downtown.
Some say that with its eclectic lineup, REDCAT, on the back side of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, captures the art school vibe of Al's, the Brave Dog and the loft parties. Others cite The Smell, a small punk club on Main Street, and Dangerous Curve Gallery, which frequently programs music, on Molino Street in the Arts District.
Opinions vary to as to exactly what's different this time around. Cedd Moses, of 213 Ventures, which has opened the Broadway Bar, the Golden Gopher and Seven Grand, says it's the critical mass, capital and commitment.
"I loved it back in the 1980s when a temporary club would open in some amazing, ornate palace," says Moses. "This time, it's even sweeter when you know it's not so temporary."
Others say the reason is simpler: Much of Downtown is safe.
Regina O'Brien says she smiles when she drives by Craby Joe's these days. The Fourth Street bar was recently shut down, but during the days of Plastic Passion, O'Brien would go there to buy extra beer if they ran out.
"We would have to keep one person in the car idling because it wasn't safe to stop and park. Now, people walk up and down that street all night," she says.
You can bet they're enjoying the nightlife as they do.
page 1, 12/17/2007
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
I lived in South Santa Monica at the time. I would go Downtown sometimes, to get my hair cut over a bathtub in the loft of an aspiring clothing designer. Or maybe I'd see a screening hosted by Film Forum at the Wallenboyd Theater.
The streets literally burned at night. In certain areas the homeless warmed themselves over fires lit in trash cans. It was scary. Frequently you felt unsafe, even in a car.
The few full-time residents would have parties and invite one another. Friends' bands would play. Soon, word of the parties spread, and they grew bigger, attracting folks from other parts of town.
"That's when we stopped going," says Carol Colin. But others didn't. Some even paid their rent by throwing an occasional party and charging outsiders.
Colin moved Downtown in 1979, leasing a building at Omar and Boyd streets. She and her partner Ted Waltz were both artists and lived above their gallery, Oranges Sardines. It was among the first of the art spaces to open Downtown. Today, the area counts more than 60 galleries.
"Don't forget the benefits. They were an important part of the scene," says Colin. Oranges Sardines hosted several. They featured music and the then-new medium performance art.
Colin remembers a benefit for Amnesty International, with an early gig by the now legendary Minutemen. "They were very raw and fabulous," says Colin.
"Some of the best parties were the loading dock parties held outside during the summer," adds photographer Raymond Y. Newton, who still lives Downtown. "Bands would use truck loading docks at abandoned warehouses as a stage and hundreds of people would show up."
Punk and new wave clubs had also begun to emerge. They opened first at the edges of Downtown.
The Vex was across the Los Angeles River, in Boyle Heights, at Brooklyn and Gage. Every other Friday, from March to November of 1980, East L.A. punkers, many of them Latino, played in the open, wood-floored space.
The Vex was on the second floor of Self-Help Graphics, a Chicano community arts organization still around today. Visual artist Diane Gamboa started to take photos there.
"It was an art center by day and a nightclub by night," Gamboa says. "Artists would come up from the studio below. The building had been there for so long. It had magic - and ghosts."
Bands like Thee Undertakers (a play on East L.A. predecessor Thee Midnighters), Why Nut? and The Brat called the Vex home base. But Self Help shut down the Vex after a riotous Black Flag concert ended in vandalism.
Soon, East L.A. bands were crossing the bridges to Downtown. One of their first stops was the Garage, in what today is the Arts District.
"The Garage attracts a seething crowd on the weekends," wrote club critic Billy "Eye" Bennight at the time. "Don't be surprised by what you see, or who you see, doing what in the dark. The place is hardcore."
The first Garage didn't last long, plagued by noise and permit problems. It reopened a few years later as a pre-rave dance club.
In Chinatown, meanwhile, Madame Wong's East and The Hong Kong Café were holding their ground.
To make rent, Esther Wong started letting bands play in her nearly empty Chinese restaurant. Soon, the place was busy every night. Over the years, a lot of big name acts played Wong's, including an early version of Guns N' Roses and the Police.
Some criticized the club for demanding that artists guarantee a crowd, often by re-selling a certain number of tickets, a common practice at Hollywood clubs.
Madame Wong's later expanded west to Santa Monica. That helped bring the club wider attention.
The Hong Kong Café staged mostly punk and performance art. The room was smaller, holding less than a hundred people.
"I remember catching the J. Giles Band at Madame Wong's East and then walking over to see Thee Undertakers and The Brat the same night at the Hong Kong Café," says Gamboa, underscoring the difference between the two clubs.
The Hong Kong was where Jack Marquette first heard Hey Taxi! Renamed RedWedding, the group became the house band at the Brave Dog. Marquette and a partner opened the "salon" in late 1980 in a renovated storefront on First Street, just west of Alameda.
"A large regular audience of all sexual preferences came to hear and see what we offered and liked. They weren't a bunch of 'fans' drawn to see a particular 'act' they had already heard before," he says.
"Only about 1,000 square feet, it was rated for an occupancy of 60. A small back patio opening to a large parking lot made the place seem larger than it was," Marquette adds.
The Brave Dog never got a liquor license. It hid under the guise of a "private parties" establishment for much of its life, offering all the beer you could drink for $5 entry.
But LAPD undercover officers shut the place down in April 1982.
Marquette moved on to run another club, Olympic. Many years later, he booked Al's Bar, which had also opened in late 1980 at 305 S. Hewitt St. in the Arts District.
The graffiti-scarred walls and high ceilings at Al's didn't make for great sound. But that didn't matter. "Al's had a solid, straight regular audience of local artists who played
pool no matter what was on stage," says Marquette.
What was on stage was an eclectic mix of all music and performance, the best of the Downtown scene and the hippest out-of-town acts. Art students and artists lived upstairs in the American Hotel, ensuring a steady clientele. Al's lasted well into the 1990s.
Often after shows, folks would roll over to nearby Gorky's. The all-night cafe didn't start out as a music venue, but it happened.
"Neighborhood folks would bring instruments and play and that too evolved into eventually an every-night-music sort of thing," says Judith Hansen, who founded Gorky's. "On Sunday nights I would make a Russian dinner and we had great Russian musicians. The place was mobbed."
The cafe had opened at Eighth and San Julian streets in November 1982, with a nod to the early 20th century Russian avant-garde, in a clean white space with exposed pipes and simple lines. The Gorky's sign is still there today.
Another establishment that had late-night legs with the music crowd was the Atomic Café, at the site of today's Seńor Fish at First and Alameda streets.
"Recovery from any late night venue inevitably led you to the Atomic Café," says Marquette. "It rocked a wicked jukebox until about 4 a.m. Good food - I fondly remember Go-Go Chicken - but a few too many stylish punky junkies for my liking."
Photographer Newton went to the Atomic often.
"Nancy, the waitress, was in the band Hiroshima," he recalls. "She was the daughter of the owner, and more or less did whatever she wanted. She set up all the songs on the jukebox, and it was great. The place had an Asian-punk vibe."
By 1984, Downtown regularly attracted nighttime visitors from all over the city. Punk and New Wave had given way to electronic dance music. Clubs melding fashion, music and performance sprung up.
Many were illegal. Promoters scouted out empty buildings and tapped power lines for one night only. Or they would rent a loft for a "photo shoot."
One of the biggest clubs was Plastic Passion, attracting as many as 1,400 people. Regina O'Brien and her three partners ran the club. She was finishing art school at UCLA and made enough to pay for her degree.
"I was very inspired by the art scene here and in New York, especially DNA, which was an outrageous theme club, and gave us the 'theme' idea," says O'Brien.
O'Brien's favorites included Helmut Newton Night - with the designer in attendance - and Alice in Wonderland Night. A regular crew of artists and models helped out with conception and staging each week.
Richard Lange, author of the recent novel Dead Boy Stories, dispersed flyers for the club. "I'd go to the previous week's location and hand out a flyer with that week's address. I'd stand there all night."
In its final months, Plastic Passion moved to old hotels, with abandoned ballrooms and, ideally, liquor licenses.
Lange says one night he tended a bar set up in an elevator. It was ready to drop a floor if the fire marshal or police showed.
Plastic Passion lasted about a year. Clubs and parties with names like Dirt Box and Scream followed.
Julie Rico, who today runs Weeneez Gallery, remembers hosting loft parties at her first Downtown space in 1988. But eventually, AIDS and the rise of real estate prices put the first wave of Downtown nightlife to rest.
Today, many in the original scene might not recognize what Downtown Los Angeles nightlife has become. Rundown spaces have received multi-million dollar upgrades and host bars and lounges such as the Edison, in the basement of the Higgins Building, and J Restaurant & Lounge, in South Park. Supper clubs and celebrity sightings are routine.
Still, some observers do see shades of the old Downtown in the new Downtown.
Some say that with its eclectic lineup, REDCAT, on the back side of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, captures the art school vibe of Al's, the Brave Dog and the loft parties. Others cite The Smell, a small punk club on Main Street, and Dangerous Curve Gallery, which frequently programs music, on Molino Street in the Arts District.
Opinions vary to as to exactly what's different this time around. Cedd Moses, of 213 Ventures, which has opened the Broadway Bar, the Golden Gopher and Seven Grand, says it's the critical mass, capital and commitment.
"I loved it back in the 1980s when a temporary club would open in some amazing, ornate palace," says Moses. "This time, it's even sweeter when you know it's not so temporary."
Others say the reason is simpler: Much of Downtown is safe.
Regina O'Brien says she smiles when she drives by Craby Joe's these days. The Fourth Street bar was recently shut down, but during the days of Plastic Passion, O'Brien would go there to buy extra beer if they ran out.
"We would have to keep one person in the car idling because it wasn't safe to stop and park. Now, people walk up and down that street all night," she says.
You can bet they're enjoying the nightlife as they do.
page 1, 12/17/2007
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
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