downtown l. a.

I know a lot of people who suffer from a chronic malady that gets worse each time there’s news out of Washington. Supporters of the current president of the United States might refer to this condition as a side effect of Trump derangement syndrome, but it’s more like Trump fatigue syndrome.

Symptoms can include a desire to tune out for a spell, stick your head in an ice bucket, or find another way to numb the senses.

But some brave souls, instead of looking away, step into the fray.

Bert Voorhees, for instance.

I came upon his name while reading coverage of the Monday evening demonstration at City Hall in downtown L.A., where protesters railed against the bombing of Iran — the latest example of Trump acting as if he’s king of the world and answerable to nobody, including Congress, the courts or the American people.

On the steps of L.A. City Hall, people attend the March 2 Answer Coalition rally protesting the attack on Iran by the U.S. and Israel.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

With missiles flying, civilians dying and chaos spreading, Voorhees told USA Today that the Iranian ayatollah’s violence against his own people did not justify a U.S. military assault. In Voorhees’ mind, it’s American democracy that is under attack.

“If people don’t stand up and get loud about this, all together right now, we’re not going to have a country,” the northeast San Fernando Valley resident said. “So, it’s time for people to get serious, get in the streets.”

I called Voorhees, a retired lawyer and teacher, and we had a long chat that continued the next day over lunch in Montrose. We’re both in our 70s, and we both have trouble aligning the country we’re living in with the vision we had for it as younger men. Who could have anticipated years of bullying and name-calling, pathological lying about a “stolen” election or the routing of congressional and judicial opposition?

I confessed to Voorhees that I completely misread the direction this country was heading back when the first Black president in history termed out in 2016. I would have bet that as a more diverse and tolerant population came of voting age, old divisions would fade slowly into history and the U.S. would keep pushing toward higher elevations.

Silly me.

Voorhees says he’s demonstrated hundreds of times, but with immigration raids and now the war in Iran, President Trump is keeping him extra busy. “If people don’t stand up and get loud about this, all together right now, we’re not going to have a country,” said Voorhees. “So, it’s time for people to get serious, get in the streets.”

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Maybe it was the naively wishful thinking of a parent wanting his kids to live in a more evolved country rather than one filled with Neanderthal notions about science, medicine, climate, and non-white immigrants.

To Voorhees, these are reasons to raise hell rather than to lose faith, and he’s not alone. The No Kings rallies in greater L.A. were massive. Home Depot civilian patrols have looked out for hard-working neighbors because “silence is violence.” The whistle brigades are defending their communities.

Denise Giardina, a Huntington Beach book seller and friend of Voorhees’, has been on Home Depot patrols in her community and said planning various political actions is practically a full-time job.

“I have daughters and wanted them to have more rights than me, and I’m not sure that’s going to happen,” Giardina said.

When Giardina needs a break, she goes for a hike, which serves as a reminder that a single protest doesn’t change the world, but small steps matter.

“Sometimes you can’t think about the end,” she said. “It’s just one foot in front of the other. It’s not government that’s going to save us. It’s going to be the people.”

A crowd gathered at Los Angeles City Hall on March 2 to protest the bombing of Iran by the United States and Israel.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Roseanne Constantino, a Silver Lake graphic designer whose activism includes knocking on doors during election cycles, sending postcards and making phone calls, has been on the front lines with Voorhees and shares his sense of duty.

“I mean, for people to say, ‘I can’t watch the news, I’m numb, I’m overwhelmed, I have to tune out,’ is so much privilege talking, because they can tune out, because they’re safe,” Constantino said.

“I find it’s like a gateway drug,” she added, “because even people who have never done anything activist in their life eventually find themselves at a protest and are buoyed by the community and the sense of purpose and expression of opposition, but also of the love of democracy.”

To Voorhees, “democracy is a privilege,” and your participation does not end with voting. “You’ve got to make sure they do the right things,” he said, “and that requires paying attention and supervising them, if you will. Politicians are supposed to work for us.”

Voorhees told me that under President Obama, when drones were used in targeted overseas killings, he took to the streets in protest.

“I’m an equal opportunity activist, but we just haven’t had in my lifetime a person so determined to destroy democracy,” Voorhees said. “I called Reagan a fascist, and Reagan felt like a fascist until I met this man, who is the head of a fascist movement in this country.”

I wagered that the bombing of Iran by the America-first president — who promised to end rather than start wars — was Trump’s way of projecting strength at a time of weakness. Many of the president’s true believers are applauding, but it seems that nothing was learned from past Middle East meddling that ended badly, and with no thoughtful consideration of what comes next, Epic Fury could be followed by Epic Quagmire.

Voorhees insists this wasn’t just a show of might, but an act of distraction.

From the Epstein files, for instance. From the empty promises about lower prices for groceries and consumer goods, the droopy favorability ratings, midterm election fears and the mess created by tariffs that cost American merchants millions of dollars and were declared illegal.

Voorhees is mad about all of that, but made a point of clarification.

He’s not demoralized.

More than 200 people protest the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran in front of City Hall in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday. Protesters carried Mexican, Palestinian and Iranian flags at the rally organized by the Answer Coalition.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“The arc of the universe bends toward justice,” Voorhees said, “but it doesn’t do it steadily. There are retreats. Two steps forward, one back. One step forward, three back. We’re in one of those periods. … But we can overcome, and I believe in the long run we probably will.”

Minneapolis is the model, he said. When two innocent people were killed in immigration raids, the community came together and rose in protest, forcing a retreat of Trump’s forces and sparking a national conversation about the brutal tactics.

“Minneapolis pushed back against that with humanity, and that’s the future we want to build,” Voorhees said. “That’s the future Martin Luther King Jr. always wanted. That’s the beloved community. That’s the ticket.”

Things will change only if “we get up off the couch,” said Voorhees, who attended another antiwar protest Saturday on the steps of City Hall with a sign that asked, “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”

“You can march ahead with a heavy heart and a downcast head, or dance ahead with a smile and a tune on your lips, hand in hand with people you care about. Why not do that? All empires fall. All kings and tyrants fail in the end. Sometimes it’s fast. Sometimes it’s slow. But that day is coming and, as the Twin Cities proved, love is stronger than hate, if only just.”

steve.lopez@latimes.com

On a dreary February afternoon in Chinatown, Ben Lovett, pianist and keyboardist of the British folk-rock group Mumford & Sons, was hours away from releasing his band’s sixth album, “Prizefighter.” The LP — co-produced by Aaron Dessner with guests Hozier, Gracie Abrams and Chris Stapleton — rejuvenates a catalog that includes a Grammy for album of the year in 2013. He could have been celebrating, or at least resting up for his upcoming “Saturday Night Live” gig and fall arena tour.

Instead, Lovett was calf-deep in sludgy rain water flooding the streets from a sudden downpour, standing at the roll-gate of a ripped-apart warehouse. “You’ll need this,” Lovett told a Times reporter as he handed out hardhats, walking his construction team through the still-raw hallways, shouting over a cacophony of circular saws.

In a few weeks, this site will be Pacific Electric, a new 750-capacity music venue that Lovett and his venue-developer firm TVG Hospitality have been converting for six years. It’s a small but ambitious entry into a Los Angeles venue landscape that’s recovering from fire and economic woes, yet has also seen several jolts of life recently.

Pacific Electric is a new flagship for the team at TVG, which has become an independent-scene force in the U.S. and U.K. over the last decade. Beyond his band, this project plants Lovett’s flag as an L.A. live music entrepreneur too.

“I’ve never had such a significant moment around a venue launch,” Lovett said in the soon-to-be dressing room at Pacific Electric. “It’s the seventh venue we’ve done, but it has never coincided with such an important creative moment with the band. I have to be very disciplined right now.”

Mumford & Sons led the 2010s folk revival that minted a generation of plaintive, earnest singer-songwriter acts atop the charts. While their genre peers’ fates have varied, Mumford & Sons remained perennial arena and festival headliners, with an ambitious midcareer streak in the studio. As pop culture’s tastes shifted, and his band moved around New York, L.A. and the U.K., Lovett returned to his show-producing roots in 2016 to build the 320-capacity nightclub Omeara in London.

Los Angeles, CA – February 19: Exterior view of the new music venue Pacific Electric, which is under construction in Chinatown and owned by Ben Lovett of the Grammy-winning folk band Mumford & Sons. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“A lot of rooms in America are owned by the promoter, so unless you are working with that promoter, you can’t play that room. I don’t like that. I think there’s something fundamentally broken with that practice,” he said. “I wanted to prove out that idea, but I had to learn everything, like how you get a liquor license. It wasn’t perfect, but the intent was so pure.”

Two years and a couple U.K. venues later, TVG got an unexpected call from the city of Huntsville, Ala., to build the Orion Amphitheater, an 8,000-capacity anchor venue for the massive civic project Apollo Park. The futuristic Grecian agora, which opened in 2022, was beyond anything they’d built before — similar to Red Rocks in Colorado or Forest Hills Stadium in New York. Suddenly, Lovett and TVG were players in the U.S. too.

“When I’m off the road, I drop my kid at school and I go to work. I sit in an office from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.,” Lovett said. “That’s not common, but there are people I really admire like Pharrell Williams who have a foot in entrepreneurship while also being a creator of songs. By doing a day’s work with TVG, sitting down at the piano can still feel like a hobby.”

Lovett, who lives in L.A., had long wanted something closer to home. The industrial northern pocket of Chinatown housing Pacific Electric is well-known to ravers and foodies — Insomniac’s Naud Street warehouse is close by, and the upscale cocktail bar Apotheke and pan-Asian restaurant Majordomo are around the corner. But besides festivals at Los Angeles State Historic Park, there hadn’t been much of a live music presence in the area (a plan to open an outpost of the NYC venue Baby’s All Right was thwarted by the pandemic).

Pacific Electric will be on the small side for a theater, a more intimate peer of downtown’s Regent or Bellwether. But Lovett’s plowed 20 years of notes from touring into the space — from the serene sandstone-hued dressing rooms with a piano and built-in laundry facilities, to a fully-separated horseshoe bar area to keep fan drink lines moving. There’s no bad sightline in the space, from either the ground floor or upper level balcony, which looks out over a stage wreathed in pink neon and wood cutouts evoking the industrial cityscape outside.

“Keeping the dirt under my fingernails with projects like this, and watching shows as often as I do, you realize how hard and how much creativity and magic there are around shows,” Lovett said. “It’s never a given to have an audience.”

To manage the venue, TVG brought on Stacey Levine, a veteran of the Palladium, Wiltern and Theatre at the Ace Hotel (now the United Theater on Broadway). While her management experience is in larger, historic venues, the chance to build something from scratch with an artist’s insight was enticing.

“People really want to get off their phones and back into independent venues, and this little pocket of downtown is about to pop off,” Levine said. “It’s very cool and close to different areas of L.A. But the venue is also really artist-focused. At 750 capacity, do you often have really nice dressing rooms? Probably not. But this is like welcoming artists into a nice hotel.”

Pacific Electric is independent in the sense that it’s not wholly exclusive for either promoter conglomerate (they plan to work with both Live Nation, AEG and others). Lovett, who cited the San Francisco concert impresario Bill Graham as a model for his company, said, “I love the opportunity to back an artist and be their advocate, and they should be able to work in any room they want to. I’ll die on that hill.”

The music won’t lean especially Mumford-ish. Its first show, with the synthwave group TimeCop1983, is slated for March 20, with a Robyn-themed club night, heavy rockers Militarie Gun and a big comedy slate from the Netflix Is a Joke festival up next.

L.A.’s nightlife — particularly in downtown — is still recovering from the pandemic-era culling of live venues and hospitality. After the malaise that’s ripped through L.A.’s entertainment economy of late, and a year of fires, ICE raids and other withering events in Los Angeles, Pacific Electric will have its work cut out to build its regular audience.

But new venues like South Pasadena’s Sid the Cat Auditorium and Re:Frame in Atwater Village have taken similar big swings in recent months. Lovett sounded hopeful that L.A. has plenty of room for more.

“I operated five venues in the pandemic, and conversations abounded like ‘Is this the death of live experiences?’” Lovett said. “My take was different, which was the one thing that we couldn’t figure out how to fix, was how to spend time together. Our greatest void was human interaction. We’re always going to trend towards congregation. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t do this.”

By day, you’d be forgiven for walking past the newest theater in downtown L.A.

It isn’t hidden in an alley or obscured via a nameless door. No, this performance space is essentially a theater in disguise, as it’s designed to look like an electrical box — a fabrication so real that when artist S.C. Mero was installing it in the Arts District, police stopped her, concerned she was ripping out its copper wire. (There is no copper wire inside this wooden nook.)

Open the door to the theater, and discover a place of urban enchantment, where a red velvet door and crimson wallpaper beckon guests to come closer and sit inside. That is, if they can fit.

With a mirror on its side and a clock in its back, Mero’s creation, about 6 feet tall and 3 feet deep yet smaller on its interior, looks something akin to an intimate, private boudoir — the sort of dressing room that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Broadway’s historic downtown theaters. That’s by design, says Mero, who cites the ornately romanticized vibe and color palette of the Los Angeles Theatre as prime inspiration. Mero, a longtime street artist whose guerrilla art regularly dots the downtown landscape, likes to inject whimsy into her work: a drainage pipe that gives birth, a ball pit for rats or the transformation of a dilapidated building into a “castle.” But there’s just as often some hidden social commentary.

With her Electrical Box Theatre, situated across from the historic American Hotel and sausage restaurant and bar Wurstküche, Mero set out to create an impromptu performance space for the sort of experimental artists who no longer have an outlet in downtown’s galleries or more refined stages. The American Hotel, for instance, subject of 2018 documentary “Tales of the American” and once home to the anything-goes punk rock ethos of Al’s Bar, still stands, but it isn’t lost on Mero that most of the neighborhood’s artist platforms today are softer around the edges.

Ethan Marks inside S.C. Mero’s theater inside a fake electrical box. The guerrilla art piece is near the American Hotel.

“A lot of galleries are for what can sell,” Mero says. “Usually that’s paintings and wall art.”

She dreamed, however, of an anti-establishment place that could feel inviting and erase boundaries between audience and perfomer. “People may be intimidated to get up on a stage or at a coffee shop, but here it’s right on street level.”

It’s already working as intended, says Mero. I visited the box early last week when Mero invited a pair of experimental musicians to perform. Shortly after trumpeter Ethan Marks took to the sidewalk, one of the American Hotel’s current residents leaned out his window and began vocally and jovially mimicking the fragmented and angular notes coming from the instrument. In this moment, “the box,” as Mero casually refers to it, became a true communal stage, a participatory call-and-response pulpit for the neighborhood.

Clown Lars Adams, 38, peers out of S.C. Mero’s theater inside a fake electrical box. Mero modeled the space off of Broadway’s historic theaters.

A few days prior, a rideshare driver noticed a crowd and pulled over to read his poetry. He told Mero it was his first time. The unscripted occurrence, she says, was “one of the best moments I’ve ever experienced in making art.”

“That’s literally what this space is,” Mero says. “It’s for people to try something new or to experiment.”

Marks jumped at the chance to perform for free inside the theater, his brassy freewheeling equally complementing and contrasting the sounds of the intersection. “I was delighted,” he says, when Mero told him about the stage. “There’s so much unexpectedness to it that as an improviser, it really keeps you in the moment.”

A downtown resident for more than a decade, Mero has become something of an advocate for the neighborhood. The area arguably hasn’t returned to its pre-pandemic heights, as many office floors sit empty and a string of high-profile restaurant closures struck the community. Mero’s own gallery at the corner of Spring and Seventh streets shuttered in 2024. Downtown also saw its perception take a hit last year when ICE descended on the city center and national media incorrectly portrayed the hood as a hub of chaos.

Artist S.C. Mero looks into her latest project, a fake electrical box in the Arts District. Mero has long been associated with street art in the neighborhood.

“A lot has changed in the 13 years when I first got down here,” Mero says. “Everybody felt like it was magic, like we were going to be part of this renaissance and L.A. was going to have this epicenter again. Then it descended. A lot of my friends left. But I still see the same beauty in it. The architecture. The history. Downtown is the most populous neighborhood in all of L.A. because it belongs to everybody. It’s everybody’s downtown, whether they love it or not. And I feel we are part of history.”

Art today in downtown ranges from high-end galleries such as Hauser & Wirth to the graffiti-covered towers of Oceanwide Plaza. Gritty spaces, such as Superchief Gallery, have been vocal about struggles to stay afloat. Mero’s art, meanwhile, remains a source of optimism throughout downtown’s streets.

At Pershing Square, for instance, sits her “Spike Cafe,” a mini tropical hideaway atop a parking garage sign where umbrellas and finger food props have become a prettier nesting spot for pigeons. Seen potentially as a vision for beautification, a contrast, for instance, from the nature intrusive barbs that aim to deter wildlife, “Spike Cafe” has become a statement of harmony.

Elsewhere, on the corner of Broadway and Fourth streets, Mero has commandeered a once historic building that’s been burned and left to rot. Mero, in collaboration with fellow street artist Wild Life, has turned the blighted space into a fantastical haven with a knight, a dragon and more — a decaying castle from a bygone era.

“A lot of times people are like, ‘I can’t believe you get away with that!’ But most people haven’t tried to do it, you know?” Mero says. “It can be moved easily. It’s not impeding on anyone. I don’t feel I do anything bad. Not having a permit is just a technicality. I believe what I’m doing is right.”

Musician Jeonghyeon Joo, 31, plays the haegeum outside of S.C. Mero’s latest art project, a theater in a faux electrical box.

After initially posting her electrical box on her social media, Mero says she almost instantly received more than 20 requests to perform at the venue. Two combination locks keep it closed, and Mero will give out the code to those she trusts. “Some people want to come and play their accordion. Another is a tour guide,” Mero says.

Ultimately, it’s an idea, she says, that she’s had for about a decade. “Everything has to come together, right? You have to have enough funds to buy the supplies, and then the skills to to have it come together.”

And while it isn’t designed to be forever, it is bolted to the sidewalk. As for why now was the right time to unleash it, Mero is direct: “I needed the space,” she says.

There are concerns. Perhaps, Mero speculates, someone will change the lock combination, knocking her out of her own creation. And the more attention brought to the box via media interviews means more scrutiny may be placed on it, risking its confiscation by city authorities.

As a street artist, however, Mero has had to embrace impermanence, although she acknowledges it can be a bummer when a piece disappears in a day or two. And unlike a gallerist, she feels an obligation to tweak her work once it’s out in the world. Though her “Spike Cafe” is about a year old, she says she has to “continue to babysit it,” as pigeons aren’t exactly known for their tidiness.

But Mero hopes the box has a life of its own, and considers it a conversation between her, local artists and downtown itself. “I still think we’re part of something special,” Mero says of living and working downtown.

And, at least for now, it’s the neighborhood with arguably the city’s most unique performance venue.

The San Fernando Valley is back in the spotlight, thanks in part to Bravo’s reality franchise “The Valley,” where viewers may recognize a slew of Ventura Boulevard staples (we see you, Rocco’s Tavern).

Much of the show is filmed in and around Studio City, a neighborhood just west of the Cahuenga Pass, about 10 miles from downtown L.A. and within the city of Los Angeles.

That last fact is what usually throws people off guard.

“Isn’t Studio City a separate city from L.A.?” they ask.

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This is when I must reply no and launch into an explanation on the expansiveness of the 818, the identity crisis it never asked for and how its lore has endured for decades on the silver screen, from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” to “The Karate Kid” and “Licorice Pizza,” to name a few.

See, long before Kendall Jenner bottled our area code with her tequila brand or “The Valley’s” Golnesa “GG” Gharachedaghi created her Valley Girl jewelry line (a response to a castmate’s constant gripe that the area had no vibe), Studio City was already a vibrant L.A. hub. It claimed a roster of power players — “The Brady Bunch” soundstage, Laurel Canyon News and the iconic Studio City Hand Car Wash — all of which still transcend ratings or storyline.

The neighborhood was originally formed around film producer Mack Sennett’s studio, which later became Republic Studios and then CBS Studio Center. With the studio as the focal point, the U.S. Postal Service designated its branch in that area as the Studio City Post Office, formalizing the name Studio City. Not exactly poetic, but it stuck. By the 1940s, Studio City developed into a “just over the hill” refuge for Hollywood’s working families, with new restaurants and bars abuzz.

My first memories of Studio City were hanging out with a childhood friend whose parents worked at CBS, and back then, it felt like the ultimate suburban dream. Fast forward to the mid-aughts and I got to live it myself, renting an apartment a few blocks from Tujunga Village, the neighborhood’s own “small-town U.S.A.” I spent countless weekends perusing food stands and trendy coffeehouses, the flaky bread and baked goods reviving me after hours of line dancing at Oil Can Harry’s or a booze-soaked late night at Page 71.

As one of the Valley’s most social enclaves, where nature is within reach, strip mall sushi is world-class and shaded residential streets feel worlds away from the Sunset Strip, Studio City still feels like the perfect remedy. Sure, finding parking after 6 p.m. can feel like something out of “The Hunger Games,” but on any given weekend you’ll still find me channeling my inner Katniss, circling blocks and deciphering cryptic signage all to revisit one of the L.A. neighborhoods that raised me.

Studio City must be the place. Then again, it always was.