For UCLA students, it can be particularly easy to remain within the bubble of Westwood.
Yet while changes in the nightlife of Westwood are largely confined to new yogurt shops and new names for local bars, downtown Los Angeles is currently experiencing a multibillion-dollar revitalization that offers bountiful opportunities for entertainment.
The clearest example of the attempt to reinvigorate downtown is the Nokia Theatre, which stands adjacent to Staples Center.
The Nokia Theatre is a state-of-the-art, 7,100-seat venue and a glaring contrast to the historic buildings that populate downtown. The theater and Staples Center comprise the initial steps in L.A. Live, a project aimed at bringing unprecedented opportunities for entertainment to the downtown area.
Funded by Anschutz Entertainment Group and the Wachovia Corporation, with some assistance from L.A. taxpayers, L.A. Live plans to construct ESPN’s West Coast Studios, a 52-story Ritz Carlton Hotel, residences, and a multitude of restaurants, bars and clubs.
Cara Vanderhook, the communications and marketing manager for the Anschutz Entertainment Group, explained that L.A. Live plans to create a hub of entertainment in Los Angeles.
“There’s no place in Los Angeles that’s a general meeting place, where you can do a live TV show and have a concert going on,” Vanderhook said. “Times Square West Coast is the feeling and the vibe that they’re going for with the entire project.”
In order to realize the “Times Square West Coast” vision, the Nokia Theatre offers a wide range of both national and regional acts to fill its capacity.
A sister company to the Anschutz Entertainment Group, AEG Live, is responsible for booking the artists who will shape Nokia’s reputation during its early, formative stage. AEG utilizes its experience in operating the El Rey Theatre, the art deco music venue located in Miracle Mile area of Wilshire.
“I think we have the ability to bring in acts of all kinds,” Vanderhook said. “From Bjork to Tool to Enrique Iglesias, it’s pretty multifaceted. … We have five to six different talent-buyers that go out and look at bands and acts of every genre, whether they’re hip and upcoming or have been around forever.”
The larger implications of L.A. Live reflect the ongoing attempt to revitalize downtown into a thriving metropolitan area. This coincides with downtown gentrification, the process by which new residents bring increased amounts of capital into an area, increasing property values and altering the area’s urban character.
And while an influx of artistic venues is linked to gentrification, UCLA urban development Professor Matthew Drennan noted that there is more involved with the process of redefining an urban area.
“It’s probably not feasible for one developer to create a Times Square West ““ there were so many separate things that went into the revitalization of Times Square, from a history of tourism, theater, businesses to support theater and name recognition. They weren’t starting with nothing,” Drennan said.
“For downtown to be viable, it has to be all day and all night, not just a place where everyone leaves after 5 p.m. When young people live there and go out at night instead of watching TV, we’ll see some real changes.”
Ryan Halk, a 2007 UCLA alumnus who relocated to downtown two months ago, has noticed changes in the minutiae of downtown residences.
“It’s completely changed since I started going to school four years ago,” Halk said. “I think four years ago, I would have never considered living downtown. I’ve come to downtown a handful of times each year the last few years, and I’ve started to see the transformation. … There’s a grocery store now, there wasn’t a grocery store for the last 60 years I think. Now there’s a Ralphs.”
A multitude of new music venues accompany this change in downtown in an attempt to dissolve the hegemony that Echo Park, Silver Lake and West Hollywood have on entertainment.
One such venue is Bordello, a new bar and restaurant with live music.
Recasting the site of the oldest bar in downtown Los Angeles, Bordello reinterprets its early 20th century existence as a brothel by offering a burlesque show every Sunday, in addition to a regular schedule of rockabilly, ska, reggae and indie bands.
Having recently celebrated the venue’s first anniversary, co-owner Tony Gower described the need to build Bordello’s reputation on music in order to survive among the many new clubs downtown.
“We’re trying to take you back in time when it was a bordello back in 1903,” Gower said. “We could have gone for the big promoters, but we tried to build a slight foundation in the first year of good, quality music. I’d say in five years’ time, we’ll see bigger, more national acts, but always keeping the good quality of music. The days of having the open mic kind of bands are over at Bordello.”
Gower found some difficulty in running a club in downtown as opposed to more typical areas that already have followers.
“There was no local following,” Gower said. “It became really a destination venue, so that’s why we started using different promoters to try to bring people into that neighborhood.”
Concert venues face other challenges making it downtown, as there is an additional underground music scene to compete with. Halk, for example, has observed other young downtown residents eschewing traditional clubs to throw electronic-music parties in uninhabited warehouses.
“The warehouse parties I’ve been to have been at the tops of buildings or in old, shabby-looking buildings that are on the ground level that you wouldn’t really think about checking out,” Halk said. “That’s sort of been the vibe that I’ve seen for the younger crowd ““ that’s what I experienced.”
Ultimately though, Gower remains confident that the new populace moving to downtown, and the corresponding revitalization, will benefit the club and the overall downtown music scene.
“It’s incredible how many people are moving down here. In five years’ time the neighborhood will have grown up with us,” he said. “Because we’re still ahead of the game here, and it has not quite developed as we once thought it was.”
It might be too early to determine the extent to which the downtown music and nightlife scenes will flourish into the main destination for young Angelenos.
However, the money and the effort being placed in the small area indicates that downtown is on the precipice of becoming a vital and exciting district worthy of any Angeleno’s attention ““ and perhaps worthy of a commute across the 10 Freeway for Bruins.
“Because downtown has been building up so much, and because there’s more and more people coming downtown all the time, it’s definitely a place to consider,” Halk said. “Right now I’m really happy living here. I’m looking forward to see how this changes and progresses, and to see what different groups of people are moving downtown. (But) whether it’s going to be a full-blown shift where we become Times Square West, though, I don’t know.”