Adventures in Frogtown
I walked along the concrete banks of the LA River to find the indie rock show that my friend DM-ed me about the day before. It was an early one, with the first band set to play at 5:30 p.m. When I arrived just after 5 and saw the generator being carried down, the tiniest clue that I was in the right place with time to spare, I kept walking, deeper into Frogtown.
This is a neighborhood that I know well, but rarely experience. It's warehouses, it's carefully curated offices for niche production companies and boutique record labels, it's luxury condos, it's modest single family homes, it's the sandwich shop with the NPR naming convention, and it's their sister restaurant where you sit beside the bike path and people-watch while snacking on olives and sipping a smart cocktail. It's the enclave for artists, avid cyclists, coffee snobs (complimentary), craft beer enthusiasts (also complimentary), and carefree kids who will ideally look back on all of this one day and appreciate the rarified air that was constantly cycling in and out of their developing lungs.
It's so close to where I live in Silver Lake — I walked there from home, 30 minutes each way — but it feels like an entirely different city. This is true of most LA neighborhoods, our lack of metropolitan cohesion is pretty much our greatest asset and liability — there is an LA for almost every type of person, but finding it is not guaranteed. I'm already plotting my next Frogtown tourist destination. I want to walk by the river closer to sunrise and stop in somewhere for coffee four or five miles later. I can practically taste my victory cold brew.
It was so nice to wander the main drag yesterday and finally make it out to another LA River show. The only one I can remember attending before was in the mid-2000s. I chatted with John Vanderslice for a while at that one. He remembered me from a brief encounter in New York several months prior, or at the very least he was extremely convincing in pretending to remember me. In my mind he was performing, but now that I'm focusing on the memory, I think he was just there and we were all watching... who were we watching?
I know for sure who we were watching last night. It was LA-via-Olympia band Gun Outfit and it was magical: noodling strings, affectless vocals, bare bones beats, hazy, and dream-like. A sound so befitting the twilight and the fleeting sensation of winter that it nearly made me cry. It did briefly transport me back to 2006, when it's entirely plausible that a band like Gun Outfit would be opening for John Vanderslice at the LA River, or vice versa. When I was young and almost indie famous.
I left around 6:30 yesterday, just after Gun Outfit ended their set. But before I hit the road, the friend who invited me (Ilya) regaled me and his other friends with a story from his frequent patronage of these shows at "the slab." As in, the random slab of concrete that juts conspicuously into this section of the LA River, the slab that is so obviously a stage, the slab that summons generation upon generation of NELA punks to grab a generator and figure it out. The city river with the banks made from the same material as the streets will have its endless supply of scrappy shows.
"There's no booker for this space," Ilya informed us. He recounted the night where he watched two bands who didn't know each other passive aggressively set up their respective shows as if the other weren't there, each taking one corner of "the slab," playing simultaneously as their respective audiences watched on, backs pressed against the backs of the rival band's crowd.
I inhaled this story and promptly made my way home. As I walked, I listened to my new friend Gabriela's surreal and sparkling electro-pop concept LP Angel On Earth, all the while thinking about what I'd just experienced, the music, the gnarled trees, the herons, the rushing water, the cars entering and exiting the 2 Freeway just over our heads, the immediate understanding of what it must have been like for Ilya and the rest of the crowd to witness that DIY duel, that accidental battle of the bands.
I am so in love with my city and all of the parallel cities that it holds.