On a Saturday night, just an hour after the Dodgers won the World Series, Bar Franca started heating up. The freshly revamped, DJ-driven lounge in downtown\u2019s historic core filled out with loft-dwelling locals still getting mileage from their Halloween costumes, while incoming Dodger fans hooted and revved their engines out on Main Street. The bar\u2019s owner, concert promoter Rolando Alvarez, was off tending to another event, but Bar Franca\u2019s two DJ\u2019s for the night, Maddy Maia and Tottie of Sisters of Sound, wound up the ebullient crowd under a soft pink, hand-painted barrel roof.<\/p>\n
If you squinted, you could have sworn it was 2019 again, back when downtown L.A.was the heart of the city\u2019s nightlife before the pandemic knocked it sideways.<\/p>\n
\u201cDowntown needs an injection. It still feels like it\u2019s been a struggle bouncing back in that area since COVID,\u201d Maia said between sets. \u201cI think it\u2019s so important to invest in areas that have suffered and have been somewhat forgotten about. I\u2019m so grateful that Bar Franca is bringing life back to that part of the city.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cDowntown is still an amazing place, and all the business owners here have high hopes, but they also need a little bit of help,\u201d said Bar Franca\u2019s Rolando Alvarez.<\/p>\n
(Carlin Stiehl\/For The Times)<\/p>\n
This year has seen unrelenting bad news for L.A. nightlife \u2014 the impacts of the wildfires, the continued Hollywood strike fallout, the cost-of-living crisis and ICE raids and protests that temporarily squelched downtown\u2019s after-dark industry. That all came on top of a miserable post-pandemic environment for a vulnerable downtown neighborhood hit harder and longer than most.<\/p>\n
Bar Franca, a passion project from one of the city\u2019s elite dance music promoters, is a little sliver of re-growth in a neighborhood that desperately needs one.<\/p>\n
\u201cDowntown is still an amazing place, and all the business owners here have high hopes, but they also need a little bit of help,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cWe\u2019re doing our best to have people back on the streets, from all corners and all sensibilities, coming and being like, \u2018I want to hang out in downtown.\u2019 But how do we take care of it? How do we get there?\u201d<\/p>\n
After two decades of hopeful growth and global cachet as a nightlife destination, downtown L.A. has suffered tremendously post-pandemic. While its resident population has stabilized and grown, a citywide shift to working from home, the ongoing tragedy of homelessness and recent political turmoil have added to the challenges for local restaurants, bars and nightclubs. Many beloved nightspots have closed, or worry they will soon.<\/p>\n
Cole\u2019s, which survived the Great Depression and two world wars but couldn\u2019t withstand the current economy, will shutter Dec. 31, though the venue is currently up for sale. Concert hall the Mayan, which opened in 1927, closed after 35 years in its current incarnation. In the summer, after a lawsuit from a former employee, the sprawling queer bar Precinct said on Instagram that \u201cWe\u2019re a couple of slow weekends away from having to close our doors. Like many small businesses, we\u2019ve taken hit after hit \u2014 from COVID shutdowns and ICE raids to citywide curfews and the ongoing decline of nightlife.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Patrons in Halloween costumes enjoy drinks at a table at Bar Franca in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
(Carlin Stiehl\/For The Times)<\/p>\n
From glamorous flagships like the Ace Hotel to locals-only dives like Hank\u2019s, downtown has lost a lot of the places that made it such a compelling place to live and party. While some new spots like the Level 8 complex<\/a>, Issa Rae\u2019s bar Lost <\/a>and the delightfully divey Uncle Ollie\u2019s Penthouse<\/a> have opened, even a booster group like the Central City Assn. of Los Angeles admitted in its September \u201cRevive DTLA\u201d report<\/a> that \u201cDowntown faces existential challenges. The pandemic, homelessness, ongoing immigration raids, and other crises have hit DTLA harder than other communities\u2026.The last five years have clearly demonstrated how a lack of representation and focused support can shift the trajectory of a neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEvery downtown in the country has experienced challenges since the pandemic, but what had been a virtuous cycle of growth is now a vicious cycle,\u201d said Nella McOsker, the president and chief executive of the Central City Assn. \u201cThere\u2019s huge potential for nightlife to succeed in downtown because the residential base is there. But when the street level experience or the perception of downtown is so fragile, we have to get it right for a safe and welcoming environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Alvarez knows that as well as anyone. The founder of Midnight Lovers \u2014 a decade-old independent concert promoter focused on dance music, one much-acclaimed in its scene \u2014 lives just a few blocks from Bar Franca. <\/p>\n Franca first opened in 2018 as an alluringly feminine cocktail spot next door to the Regent Theater. With hand-painted Art Deco flourishes and an ear for great tunes (the bar used to house the electronic music record store Stellar Remnant in the back), Franca had a couple of exuberant pre-pandemic years before the surrounding area, just a block from Skid Row, began to backslide.<\/p>\n When Alvarez, a regular, heard the owners were thinking of selling this year, he leapt to invest in a permanent address for Midnight Lovers in the heart of downtown. Although Alvarez already leased a larger event space just over the L.A. River for his concerts, Franca was the kind of spot he\u2019d be pained to lose in his neighborhood.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you live downtown, you know there\u2019s only like a handful of places that have a nice atmosphere when it comes to music,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cSomeone brought me here a long time ago, and something about it felt so cozy. Sometimes we feel like going to the warehouse, sometimes we feel like the club, sometimes we feel like a nice little cocktail. I still feel like smaller, more intimate places is where the magic is.\u201d<\/p>\n Franca\u2019s physical interior hasn\u2019t changed too much since the handoff in October (though the cocktail menu, from Broken Shaker\u2019s Gabriel Orta and Jonny Child, now leans a little more seasonal and N\/A friendly). What\u2019s different is its aspirations to join the small list of bars \u2014 like Highland Park\u2019s Gold Line and Lincoln Heights\u2019 Zizou \u2014 that work as the front porch for L.A.\u2019s club scene.<\/p>\n \u201cI love playing and going to late night parties, but that\u2019s not for everyone, and there aren\u2019t many spots in L.A. who prioritize this sound,\u201d said DJ Tottie. \u201cHaving a slice of what you can get at Midnight Lovers in Bar Franca\u2019s setting for free, with great cocktails and being in bed by 2:30 a.m., is a winner.\u201d<\/p>\n (Carlin Stiehl\/For The Times)<\/p>\n His typical shows are larger (and post-pandemic, younger-skewing) sets of house, techno and disco. But \u201cit\u2019s always been a dream to have something small,\u201d Alvarez said. <\/p>\n As the street scene in downtown has gotten more erratic, and the costs and hassle of trekking to far-flung venues has escalated, he acknowledged that \u201cfriends have hinted that it\u2019d be nice to have something low key, like if you\u2019re on a date or have people from out of town that didn\u2019t feel like going to a warehouse. We\u2019re always morphing and developing, and at this moment, that\u2019s where I want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n The first thing Alvarez did was truck in a new hi-fi system and put Franca\u2019s busy slate of DJ programming quite literally front and center behind the bar. For wizened millennials who might not have the juice to stay out until 6 a.m. at a warehouse party, or for young artists and promoters looking for a small room to re-cultivate local music scenes lost to the pandemic, these DJ-driven bars have become incredibly important.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing from the U.K., we grew up with so many drinking holes, which offer a sense of community \u2014 not just a rave,\u201d DJ Tottie said on a break from her set. \u201cI love playing and going to late night parties, but that\u2019s not for everyone, and there aren\u2019t many spots in L.A. who prioritize this sound. So having a slice of what you can get at Midnight Lovers in Bar Franca\u2019s setting for free, with great cocktails and being in bed by 2:30 a.m., is a winner.\u201d<\/p>\n Franca keeping its lights on is just as important for downtowners, who have had reason to wonder if their neighborhood will remain a vital place to go out at night. With so many generations-old venues closing, a sense of doom can become self-fulfilling.<\/p>\n \u201cLiving in downtown after 2020, it was back to back to back on different things that weren\u2019t great for us,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cBut I still live downtown, and every time there\u2019s a new business or something cool opening, I get happy, because there\u2019s nothing more heartbreaking than to do my morning walk and see more for-lease signs up. If you see one or two, it\u2019s fine, but if you start to see more it gets in your head, like, \u2018What\u2019s really happening?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n Nicole Williams makes drinks at Bar Franca in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n (Carlin Stiehl\/For The Times)<\/p>\n McOsker said that street-level nightlife is a bellwether for the broader downtown economy, and the community\u2019s social health. \u201cIt matters a lot. What does it mean that a century-old institution like Cole\u2019s closes in 2025 when it survived two world wars?\u201d she said. \u201cI hear people lament what kinds of social fabric were eroded in the pandemic. But I\u2019m bullish on the nighttime economy as an anchor of downtown\u2019s appeal, which is all more reason to keep reinvesting in it. It\u2019s an ecosystem you can\u2019t get anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n Even amid the overlapping crises of homelessness, fires, economic travails, righteously disruptive protests, downtown has too much appeal to stay down forever. Franca alone doesn\u2019t herald a revival, but it might get music fans back in the habit of cutting loose on Main. <\/p>\n \u201cThe architecture is still great here, there are still amazing places and you\u2019re central to everything,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cMidnight Lovers has always been driven by this little area. I have high hopes because downtown is so great and a lot of creatives still live in these buildings, even if some don\u2019t want to go out because things aren\u2019t the way they used to be from 2015-19. I think it\u2019s going to take effort from all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a Saturday night, just an hour after the Dodgers won the World Series, Bar Franca started heating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[9331,30502,599,30499,3760,13827,818,6858,1493,30500,48,52,51,47,50,49,30501,290,1831,1086,72],"class_list":["post-46418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-alvarez","tag-amazing-place","tag-area","tag-bar-franca","tag-challenge","tag-crisis","tag-downtown","tag-dtla","tag-homelessness","tag-l-a-nightlife","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-midnight-lovers","tag-neighborhood","tag-owner","tag-pandemic","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} <\/p>\n
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