The Lovin' Spoonful Said It Best

And so I quote the dad rock classic "Hot town, summer in the city/Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty."-- The Lovin' Spoonful "Summer in the City"

We're in the midst of a heat wave right now with temperatures reaching record highs for June (112 in the deathtrap I call home, the Valley, and not much better anywhere else in the city).  Whenever we have a heat wave in L.A., all conversations eventually center around the scorching weather and are peppered with lethargic moans of, "Oh my God, I just can't take this heat anymore."  It's as though none of us can remember the previous Labor Day Weekend (because the last holiday of the summer is always gruesome) when we were wilting in nightclubs whilst wondering if maybe Al Gore is onto something.

The hardest part about going out in Los Angeles during the summer months is getting out of the house.  At home, there is air conditioning, a supply of tap water and a freezer in which one can insert one's head if all else fails.  At home, you can sit around in underwear or, at the very least, a pair of cut-off jeans that have since developed ventilation holes in publicly inappropriate places.  Inside nightclubs, the air conditioning stops working once the club fills, water will cost you and you will spend much of your night fighting with someone over a spot in front of a rinky-dink fan.  Plus, you kind of have to wear clothes.  Well, maybe you don't need much in the clothing department if you're a looker, but for us ordinary people with flabby arms and legs that haven't seen a razor in a few days, shit needs to be covered.

At 10 p.m. or so, right after One Life to Live ended, we headed out to the Echo Curio in Echo Park to see the Tleilaxu Music Machine and friends.  It was ninety-five degrees in the car and far worse inside the tiny art gallery.  When we arrived at the venue, there was a massive crowd gathered on the sidewalk, leading us to believe that perhaps the show had sold out.  In fact, it was simply a matter of the fans' inability to cool down the venue that resulted in the crowd hanging out on Sunset Blvd. in between the live sets.  We caught Winners, a local electro-punk with a penchant for singing in falsetto and doing the macarena to songs of patriotism.  Tleilaxu followed with a short that was heavy on the gabber beats.  Dude's a madman, essentially turning this curiosity shop/art gallery into a sweaty mosh pit filled with PLUR.  After he finished, the room was schvitz-dank and smelled unsurprisingly like Sunday afternoon following the afterhours club.

We headed over to the Mountain Bar in Chinatown afterward, where our friend Cromdre co-promotes and DJs the party Pinche Way.  We got there just in time to catch Laco$te play and I think it's just better for everyone involved if we don't mention that performance again.  In the downstairs area, Icy Lytes played a live set that was glow-stick madness in the best way possible.  

And so the night ended with this pointless tale's two protagonists wandering around Chinatown until they ended up at Hop Woo, home of tasty steamed buns and massive bowls of duck soup. 

By 3 a.m., when I finally laid down to catch up on the sleep that has eluded me this past week, I thought about how a night that almost ended with me falling asleep in front of the TV turned out to be an evening of thrills, good and bad.  The hardest part of surviving summer in the city is getting out of the house.